Sweeping from the hills of Hawaii to the South African veldt, Come Sunday marks the debut of a wondrously talented storyteller. What a novel this is! Isla Morley’s transcendent work makes our spirits soar. Morley’s splendid talent reminds us of Barbara Kingsolver’s spirited prose, along with the piercing truth of Jodi Picoult. We are also reminded of how it felt, long ago, to dive into the drama of The Thorn Birds.

Come Sunday centers on Abbe Deighton, the independent-minded wife of a minister in Hawaii. Abbe isn’t a native Hawaiian. She grew up in a broken home in turbulent apartheid South Africa, seeing things she shouldn’t have seen... and still doesn’t entirely understand. But she is trying to put them behind her, working to enjoy her life in her leaky house on a Honolulu hillside with a precocious three-year-old daughter, Cleo, and her husband, Greg.

Abbe’s world explodes when the unimaginable happens: her daughter is struck and killed by a car. Cleo’s death launches Abbe into new terrain, where she is forced to examine her relations with the people she professes to love, her tenuous faith, and the events surrounding the calamitous last summer in the homeland of her youth. Searching for a reason to go on, Abbe returns to the South Africa of her childhood, a world where curses were cast, secrets were kept, and a murder was concealed. It is there that Abbe will have to make the harshest of choices, one that blurs the lines of blame and forgiveness, fate and faith.

A moving tribute to the power of hope --- and the promise of home --- Come Sunday is a luminous novel that will enchant your reading group at every turn.