Susan Howatch Part II

Susan returned to England after some years of living in Ireland, and continued with her writing.   However although she was a success, and her books brought in a lot of money, she began to find her life unsatisfying.   She was depressed and trying to find something that fulfilled her.  She was living in Salisbury near the Cathedral and although she had not been religious previously, she began to get interested in religion.  She embarked on reading about God, religion and the Church of England, and became a practising Christian.
She had always researched her novels carefully so it took some time before she felt ready to start writing a series of books on the Church of England.  After some years of educating herself, she wrote the first book of her series.  It was called Glittering Images.  It was published in 1987 and was set in the 1930s.  She concentrated on the lives and beliefs of 3 different Anglican clergymen.  The fisrt one we meet is Dr Charles Ashworth, who is a young lecturer at university, and who has a highly intellectual approach to his faith as a clergyman.  When undergoing a spiritual crisis, after the death of his young wife, which drives him almost to breakdown, he meets Jon Darrow, who is a former Navy chaplain, and an Anglo Catholic. Jon is a monk –experienced in spiritual counselling but he has been married and had children...
He counsels Charles, and sorts out his problems... But in the second book we see Jon approaching his own crisis, when he believes that he is being called to leave the monastery and work in the world again, at the start of World War II.  He leaves his monastery and becomes an ordinary parish priest but finds adjustment to the world very difficult.   He marries again, and finds that marriage to a younger woman has its own problems.  He has to acknowledge that although he can sort out other people’s problems, he has not been very good at working on his own issues...and has to achieve reconciliation with the 2 adult children of his first marriage. Eventually he becomes a teacher at the diocese's Theological college and has a son by  his second wife.. and achieves a degree of stability.