What do You think about Touch (2002)?
Charlie Lawson joined a Franciscan order and became a Monk serving in Brazil.Bill Hill is a former minister who currently sells R.V.s. He used to run the Uni-Faith ministry in Dalton, Georgia. He's present when a young man named Juvenal touches a woman who has been blind for fifteen years. Suddenly, her sight returns.Juvenal is the name Lawson was given when he joined the Monks. Now, Bill is sure that Juvenal has a healing touch and if he could persuade him to join Bill for a TV ministry, the result could be an economic boom.There are interesting characters in the story, as usual for the author. One of them is August Murray who is part of a group called Outrage and want the Church to go back to its traditional ways and have Latin be the language of the Mass.This is very different from Leonard's usual novels and I enjoyed the picture of Juvenal putting his healing touch to work with children who had serious ailments.Overall, this was a pleasant read with interesting characters and a well described setting.
—Michael
read this in march, 2014 and here it is december the 19th...almost the end of the year. i do not remember much about this story...but it is a solid four-star story. leonard never disappoints. has a comedic vein that reads well. too...i shelved this "time passages" which has to do with a character using his/her imagination...something one rarely sees in fiction and when it is on display it is a joy to read. leonard does, has done it a lot...as have some others whose stories i enjoy. means nothing to you, perhaps, most likely...but it is something that i have noted and have begun to track.at some point, perhaps i'll come back and describe the time passages. til then, cue al stewart and enjoy the read. ooga booga!Touch, Elmore Leonard: Another key word, daydream, that Leonard uses to set up this time passage. In a daydream he used to serialize when he was younger--and still imagined from time to time--August was Augustus, a Christian of ancient Rome. This time passage is short, a long paragraph, but it works in this case for the way it builds on August's character. Too, if you're a Leonard fan, this story is worth checking out. In the foreword, Leonard writes, TOUCH takes place in 1977. That's the year the book was written and, within a couple months, rejected by more than a dozen hardcover publishers. He goes on to describe some of the problems a writer faces--and I believe in 1977 he was an established writer...I think this one was finally published in 1987. He says I had a good time writing Touch, imagining mystical things happening to an ordinary person in a contemporary setting...friends of mine who read a lot think it's my best book. The foreword was written in 1987...and Leonard just recently passed.
—wally
Great. This is probably my 3rd favorite book that secularly tries to tackle religion (the other two being Moore's Lamb, and Morrow's God is Dead trilogy). I think it only faltered in one spot, where Lynn and Juvenal start discussing their feelings about each other, which I'm sure Leonard meant to be innocent, especially with regards to Juvenal ... but ultimately came off really saccharine. No worries though, he righted the ship. It's nice to see authors have some type of respect for religion, because it's cool and hip most of the time to bash it. But, if you do it right, books about God can be a-okay to read.
—Matt Piechocinski
