BELIEF

A first novel energetically if unconvincingly details the tragic consequences of a man seeking to find God on a journey that embraces different faiths in distant countries.

New Zealander Johnson vividly renders varied places—New Zealand, Australia, Utah, Illinois, and Canada—from 1880 to 1920. In a prologue, ten-year-old William McQuiggin is severely beaten by his father, a judge in Auckland, but the incident doesn’t help explain what William later does and becomes. The story moves to 1898, when William, now married to Myra, has a vision of God one night on the land he’s supposed to be clearing for his father. But in spite of the vision, he still drinks, keeps a still, and, except for frequent demands for sex, ignores Myra, whose first baby has just died. William hates working the land, and one night he sets fire to the house and heads back to Auckland, leaving newly pregnant Mrya to manage on her own. Myra, who through all her travails remains sexually attracted to William, is taken in by the McQuiggin household, where she bears twins. William, meanwhile, having met some Mormon missionaries, heads off to Utah. When Mormonism fails him, he moves to Illinois, and, taken with Dr. Dowie, a charismatic preacher, lives in the community Dowie forms. There, he’s soon joined by Myra, who bears him more children, but William’s old demons—liquor, violence, other women—still haunt him, and a fearful Myra flees with the children to Vancouver. William finds her, and, as usual, she lets herself be seduced by him, though he is increasingly delusional and his religious fervor brings about the death of one of the children. The family returns to Auckland, where William’s search for God will become even more dangerous.

A serious subject, treated respectfully, but William’s search for faith continues to seem prompted more by plot than character.