The Holy Spirit
Date
2014-10-07
Authors
Farmer, Ben
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Abstract
The Holy Spirit spans a year in the life of the Potters, as tragedy and exceptional circumstances cause a skeptical family to wonder about faith and their shared future. The novel opens in San Diego in the summer of 2008 and closes in eastern Canada early in the following summer. David and Harry, a father and son, are the principal characters. David’s own father has recently been struck by a car and killed along with the family dog. The Potters move to Forest Glen, a new community built on the campus of a 19th Century finishing school in the suburbs of Washington DC. The Potters—Sarah 46, David 45, Harry 21, Vicky 20, and Kevin 17—are among the initial wave of occupants, and move into a Dutch windmill, where they spend the year suffering from power outages as construction and unusual weather rages around them. The new neighborhood’s boundaries are Rock Creek Park on the south and west, and 495 on the north and east. To reach the neighborhood one has to pass either Walter Reed to the southeast, or the LDS temple grounds to the northwest. Forest Glen is the principal setting of the novel. Harry deals poorly with the loss of his grandfather and the move from his childhood home, and is asked to leave his college halfway through his junior year, shortly after he has met and fallen in love with Maya. David is plagued by an encounter with illegal immigrants on San Diego beaches, ghost sightings, unusual visitors, and his eldest son’s temporal problems. Together they write several choose-your-own-adventure scripts that will be shown in the Tivoli Theater, in which David has sizably invested. Harry accidentally impregnates Maya, back from her spring break in Spain, and she determines to raise the child, but not with him. The novel ends with Harry resolving to pursue Maya and return to college.
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Keywords
Holy Spirit, Potter, Harry (Fictitious character), Ghosts, Fathers, Sons, Immigration