Spider in a tree

Description:

In his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all others: Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards's young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards's wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale.--

subjects: Fiction,  Preaching,  History,  Fiction, biographical,  Fiction, historical,  Massachusetts, fiction,  Clergy, fiction,  Preachers,  FICTION / Historical,  FICTION / Literary,  FICTION / Religious

People: Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Places: Northampton (Mass.),  Massachusetts

Times: Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775