I wouldn’t have known about this book but a friend, and fellow blog reader of yours, sent it to me last Christmas. I’m glad I respected the sender so much to get past a tedious beginning of Cathedral and horology history (see I learned a new word: it means the art of making timepieces) to the propulsive and redemptive end. It shows by example the difference Godly love can make.

This story is about a Cathedral Dean and a a non-believing watchmaker in nineteen century England. The title is a pun, for it is both about the difference his timepiece made and about the effect of his time shepherding of his flock. And there is a wonderful side character named Polly, whom you can’t help but love. Here are a few quotes about her:

• “Her equanimity in disaster, her immunity from the strains and miseries of the artistic temperament, the way evil ran off her like water off a duck’s back, were to exasperate him all their life together and yet be his delight and salvation also.”
• “all comfort seemed part of her”
• “when at last she gained her hard little bed in the attic she would still be as cheerful as a cricket.”

The Dean’s Watch is a Christian novel whose profundity creeps up on you. Not preachy, but earnest, and full of struggle and failing, as well as reformation and loving one’s neighbor. By the end you understand it’s guiding text, “Love is the Lord by whom we escape death.”  Salvation comes by loving, plain and simple.

Like me you might want to read this one, and be patient at the beginning and stick with it, for in the end you will be glad you did. I give it 5 stars.