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The Calvin Becker Trilogy!
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“Poignant and hilarious, Calvin is immensely appealing. . . . Schaeffer . . . is very funny, but we are never far from a sense that harshness and violence are real; we are never entirely sure how things will turn out. ” —Los Angeles Times
Calvin, the irrepressibly endearing hero of Frank Schaeffer’s Calvin Becker Trilogy, is the son of a missionary family, and their trip to Portofino is the highlight of his year. But even in the seductive Italian summer, the Beckers can’t really relax. Calvin’s father could slip into a Bad Mood and start hurling potted plants at any time. His mother has an embarrassing habit of trying to convert “pagans” on the beach. And his sister Janet has a ski sweater and a miniature Bible in her luggage, just in case the Russians invade and send them to Siberia. His dad says everything is part of God’s plan. But this summer, Calvin has some plans of his own . . .
“The wonderful thing about this book is that it feels like a vacation. . . . And, like any really good vacation, it ends too soon.” —The Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Beautifully written . . . great insight and unselfconscious humor.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A wry coming of age tale . . . splendid laugh-out loud moments.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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“A profound and sometimes painful look at the challenges of practicing faith, and a lot
of fun to read.” —Washington Times
Calvin Becker is back in a timely, timeless story about the volcanic sexual curiosity of a fourteen-year-old boy born into a fundamentalist family so strict that he has never seen a movie, watched television, or danced (and has to hide his five copies of Mad magazine in the attic). It is 1966, and Ralph and Elsa Becker, Reformed Presbyterian missionaries from Kansas, are stationed in Switzerland, and on a modest ski vacation with their three children: tyrannical eighteen-year-old Janet, angelic Rachael, and our narrator, the irrepressible Calvin. But then, while at the Hotel Riffelberg, high above Zermatt, the fourteen-year-old falls into the hands of a waitress who, while bringing him his breakfast each morning, initiates him into ecstasies he can barely begin to comprehend.
“Told with warmth and humor.” —Library Journal
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| “Mr. Schaeffer’s gifts as a novelist are more than comic: Saving Grandma has a deeper river flowing through it as well, one that is sensual and loving and full of true grace. This is a wonderful book!”
—Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
Calvin Becker’s family are good Bible-thumping missionaries; it’s their duty to spread the Word to everyone they meet. But now they face their greatest spiritual challenge right in their own home: Grandma—foulmouthed, foul-tempered, and heathen through and through. But in the face of a pious mother determined to save Grandma’s soul, and a father content to retreat into the closed confines of his opera collection, Calvin, knee-deep in his own frustrating pursuits of amour, starts to understand Grandma a little better—and appreciate her a little more.
“Schaeffer manages to be both irreverent and sympathetic toward the foibles of this hilariously holier-than-thou family.” —St. Paul Pioneer Press
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