In his warm, down-home style, Gulley chronicles the humorous and occasionally moving world of Sam Gardner, a Quaker pastor who has just moved back to his hometown. Here’s my review of the next book in the series, Just Shy of Harmony.Readers everywhere have fallen in love with Philip Gulley's Home to Harmony, a charming novel of a small, friendly town whose endearing and eccentric residents are just like old friends. I definitely plan on continuing the series. Nevertheless, the humor and the evident, relatable understanding of human nature here makes this easy reading worthwhile. Maybe you’re supposed to assume the townsfolk gave Sam all of these details at some point after they happened? He doesn’t say so. Somehow, he knows their thoughts and feelings and can convey major and minor details about the characters’ personal/private moments to the reader, as if Sam is sitting right there in other people’s heads and seeing what they see in every scene, during years past and present. Sam narrates in first person, but while he’s telling stories about his fellow townsfolk, he’s more of an omniscient narrator in their lives. The delightfulness of the read can make you forgive the fact that the method of storytelling doesn’t always make sense. The book with its hodgepodge of flawed folks has got plenty of funny moments with some poignant ones mixed in, one which almost made me cry. Rather, this is more a collection of small-town vignettes, most of them ending with “moral of the story” reflections from Sam with a sense of regret here, nostalgia there, and hope overall. Unlike that holiday tale, this novel doesn’t have a central plot with a problem and a resolution.
My thoughts: I ran backwards to read this first Harmony book after I stumbled upon a Christmas novella further along in the series and laughed my head off reading it. I tend to rate books not according to how “perfect” they are, seem to be, or are said to be in general but rather to how perfect they are to me.ĭescription: In this inaugural volume in the Harmony series, Quaker minister Sam Gardner experiences his first year back in his small hometown of Harmony.
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