Abide With Me

July 17, 2025 /

Abide With Me ~ Elizabeth Strout

Tyler Caskey, a young minister in West Annett, Maine, is mourning the loss of his wife. He has two daughters, Katherine and Jeannie. Katherine is in Kindergarten, and is acting up at school and church. Jeannie lives with Tyler’s mother while he figures things out. Connie Hatch works as a housekeeper and helps with Katherine as well. It’s late 1959, and Tyler is struggling to make sense of his loss, to help his daughter through her grief, to guide his congregation, even as the gossip around town turns mean.

Charlie and Doris Austin are congregants in the church, and Doris is the organist during services. Their relationship is strained and complicated, with a couple of secrets.

I don’t know about this one. I liked it enough to finish it. I enjoy Strout’s writing, and I was mostly happy with the ending. The (adult) characters are pretty flawed and often take the coward’s way out of difficult situations. If you are a fan of Strout’s work and want to read her second novel, it’s worth your time. Otherwise I would skip it.

One fun(?) thing is that I listened to this book via my library app, and it is an older recording. It was recorded for ‘books on tape’, and every once in a while, usually in the middle of a sentence, I would hear: “End of disc 4. Disc 5.” Jarring, but amusing because I don’t listen all of the time. I’m old enough to remember when my aunt had an 8-track player in her car, it kind of reminded me of that.

14 Comments

  • AC

    July 17, 2025 at 6:55 am

    I do beleive that this is a true basic story that I have heard more than once in church. I mean a long time ago now since my church days are now long behind me.

  • AC

    July 17, 2025 at 7:00 am

    I didn’t say that right, and I think I have the wrong hymn anyway. ?

    I think it was the story of It Is Well With My Soul that I was thinking about.

    ” This hymn was written after traumatic events in Spafford’s life. The first was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which ruined him financially (Spafford had been a successful lawyer and had invested significantly in property in the area of Chicago that was extensively damaged by the great fire).”

    In further, just ignore me completely. ??

  • K @ TS

    July 17, 2025 at 9:21 am

    I am not a big Strout fan so I’ll probably skip this one. I have listened to audiobooks where they were clearly taken from CDs too! It is a little interruptive!

  • Ernie

    July 17, 2025 at 3:30 pm

    I think I read one Strout book and I thought it was fine, but I don’t think I’m really overly crazy about her. If you weren’t overly crazy about this one – I think I’ll skip it. But – it does sound interesting. Like the premise seems like there are a lot of things happeneding and relationships that could make for an interesting read.