Random House, 2005 $14 (paperback)

Can you imagine reading a book in which the hero is a minister who, at the outset of the story, is delivering his final sermon before leaving to commence a prison sentence for having raped one of his teenage parishioners? (He is only able to appear in his church this last time because he has accepted a plea bargain with jail time; thus he is guilty only of a misdemeanor.) Giving the author of Plain Heathen Mischief the benefit of the doubt, I thought I would try a few chapters. After all, the author, Martin Clark, is a Virginia circuit court judge who ought to know something about crime and whose previous novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, not only won several awards but was also selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Thank goodness I did continue for I found this book delightful. Its hero, Joel King, did make a terrible mistake for which he pays by losing not only his church but his family as well. But he struggles back, making further errors as he does—no more rapes, however—eventually working his way into the reader’s heart. Clark is equally good at portraying good and bad characters and both types are very well represented in this story. If you like the novels of Richard Russo and Anne Tyler or the short stories of Alice Munro or Annie Proulx, you’ll enjoy Clark’s writing just as well. I have already ordered his earlier novel.