I come from such a family and I am always interested in hearing about others experiences in this matter.
In this instance, the religion is one I've never heard of before; it is an offshoot of the Lutheran Church called Laestadian.
The parents in the family tried to be as understanding as possible with their children who fell away except for one case: they couldn't deal well with their son who turned out gay.
There seemed to be more of a fracture in their family, the children who fell away from the church seemed to stick together more and the children who stayed with the church seemed to stay to themselves. I am lucky in that in my family everyone is pretty accepting of each other and the ones who stuck with the church don't leave the other ones out of anything.
The only thing that was disjointed about this novel was that the last chapter took you back to 1800s when the minister Laestadian was alive. All along you read about this family and then all of a sudden you are reading about the person who started the religion. There is no connection to this last chapter except by this time you know who Laestadian is. I was disappointed that the author chose to end the book this way as it was so disharmonious to the rest of the book.
Rating: 7 / 10
ISBN: 9780805095333
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
Edition: 1st Edition