Donna Spector

The Candle of God Donna Spector

Can faith healing save a dying boy? Struggling with cystic fibrosis, fourteen-year-old talented and brilliant Danny searches for clues about his missing father. Danny's illness attracts an unlikely retinue from California to Arizona - his eccentric, divisive Jewish family; his rambunctious Gentile cousins; two prostitutes in downtown Los Angeles; a motorcycle gang called the Prickly Pears; an ex-rabbi; psychics; various bizarre faith healers; Danny's dead grandfather and other friendly spirits. All - including Earl, head of the Tucson Atheist Society, who Danny mistakenly believes is his father, and Clyde, a faith healer who is Danny's real father - are connected with Danny's destiny, culminating in a grand, Pasadena faith healing. Music runs through the novel, as does love, like a song with many variations: Danny's longing for his father, his grandmother's struggle to love her Gentile grandchildren, his mother's lust for the ex-rabbi, his cousin Jessamyn's sometimes misguided efforts to protect Danny and, at the center of the novel, a zany wedding at One-Eyed Pete's bar in Tucson. The lesson everyone but Danny's mother learns is acceptance, of themselves and each other.