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This is the second in the well-regarded series featuring Lily Connor, Episcopal priest and head of a Boston woman's center. In addition to her other tasks, Lily is a member of a committee studying anti-Semitism in the Christian church. Also on the committee is Anna Banieka, Lily's friend, and daughter of a Polish Catholic couple killed by the Nazis for harboring Jews. Anna herself was sent to Auschwitz as a small child. When the two arrive at the Episcopal Cathedral for a Holocaust memorial service, they encounter an anti-Semitic display that points to a breakaway Catholic group. Shortly thereafter, Anna disappears, and Lily spends the rest of the book searching for her and trying to uncover the complicated web of relationships that connect her friend with a Catholic anti-Semitic cult. Earth Has No Sorrow is a thoughtful, well-written, in some ways rather cerebral, mystery. Blake appears somewhat more interested in her heroine's crisis of faith and struggles with the bottle and with commitment to Tom, her police photographer lover than in any sort of close examination of the roots of the Holocaust in Christian anti-Semitism. This is not to say that Blake either ducks or excuses the complicity; she does not, but the personal histories of Lily and Anna take precedence over any discussion of either historical or contemporary Christian anti-Semitism. There is a woo-woo element as well, which, while restrained, I found a bit distracting. Nevertheless, Blake's characters are attractive, flawed, and human. For readers in search of a Christian cozy that will not insult his or her intelligence, it would be hard to find one better than this.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, May 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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