Look For Something Good by Robert Drews (fiction). If you’re tired of smart-ass, potty-mouthed detectives, here’s the antidote. The two main characters in “Look for Something Good” are two good men searching for The Good. Father Thomas is a former teenage-thug-turned-Marine, now a dedicated Catholic priest, who takes a break from his parish to attend his high school reunion. He decides to hitchhike his way back to Los Angeles, and on the way, he meets good people who, in one way or another, have transformed their lives by finding faith and helping others. The love of baseball saves J.J. Werth, a rather weird, aging bachelor who names his car Ruby and likes hanging out in laundromats. He spends some ugly time being depressed after being laid off unexpectedly. He goes to his baseball pal Fr. Thomas for a chat in “the box.” In the Confessional, Fr. Thomas says the best way to get over bad is to look for The Good. J.J. decides to go on a pilgrimage to clear his mind of negativity and find evidence of good in the world. So there you have it: two good guys off on the highways and byways to see if they can do good when they meet up with Goodness. This does not seem like an engaging plot – not even a remotely possible plot. But it turns out the novel is rather like the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart. It simply engages the old emotions that Mom and Dad honed in us, the ones that everyone is supposed to have but tries to disguise in our modern, cut-throat world. Atheists and “nones” might get turned off by this story. There are lots of Bible quotes going on, but the writing is top-notch. The cultural details (pop music, baseball, cities on “the road”) are riveting. There’s enough “stuff” here to keep the skeptics enchanted — maybe against their will. Readers have to be willing to go back in time, to the place where people still believed in helping, loving and saving the shaggiest of characters. It might take 50 pages to get to this place, but it’s worth the effort.
Look For Something Good by Robert Drews (fiction). If you’re tired of smart-ass, potty-mouthed detectives, here’s the antidote. The two main characters in “Look for Something Good” are two good men searching for The Good.
Father Thomas is a former teenage-thug-turned-Marine, now a dedicated Catholic priest, who takes a break from his parish to attend his high school reunion. He decides to hitchhike his way back to Los Angeles, and on the way, he meets good people who, in one way or another, have transformed their lives by finding faith and helping others.
The love of baseball saves J.J. Werth, a rather weird, aging bachelor who names his car Ruby and likes hanging out in laundromats. He spends some ugly time being depressed after being laid off unexpectedly. He goes to his baseball pal Fr. Thomas for a chat in “the box.” In the Confessional, Fr. Thomas says the best way to get over bad is to look for The Good. J.J. decides to go on a pilgrimage to clear his mind of negativity and find evidence of good in the world.
So there you have it: two good guys off on the highways and byways to see if they can do good when they meet up with Goodness. This does not seem like an engaging plot – not even a remotely possible plot. But it turns out the novel is rather like the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart. It simply engages the old emotions that Mom and Dad honed in us, the ones that everyone is supposed to have but tries to disguise in our modern, cut-throat world.
Atheists and “nones” might get turned off by this story. There are lots of Bible quotes going on, but the writing is top-notch. The cultural details (pop music, baseball, cities on “the road”) are riveting. There’s enough “stuff” here to keep the skeptics enchanted — maybe against their will. Readers have to be willing to go back in time, to the place where people still believed in helping, loving and saving the shaggiest of characters. It might take 50 pages to get to this place, but it’s worth the effort.