Summary

Everett meets with Pem’s bishop and learns of Pem’s obsession with the Holocaust and his criticism of postwar Christian theology. Pem’s father-in-law writes him asking for advice in dealing with a man in a wheelchair who has camped out in front of his house and cannot be gotten rid of. Everett continues the biography of his family with a reintroduction to his mother and father and the further biography of his older brother, Ronald, who fought in World War II. Ronald survives a plane crash only to land on the unearthed bones of those who were murdered in World War I.

Analysis

The revelations of Pem’s bishop underscore the motivating forces behinds Pem’s search for truth in religion and his search for the Kovno diaries. He is unable to reconcile the God of the Bible and the God who allows atrocities...