Be Near Me (Paperback)

From the Publisher: Trapped by class hatreds and threatened by personal flaws, Father David Anderton, the Catholic priest in a small Scottish parish, begins to discover what happened to the ideals of his generation, but it is his friendship with two rebellious teenagers, Mark and Lisa, that triggers the enmity, suspicions, and simmering hatred of a town that resents strangers. Reprint.Trapped by class hatreds and threatened by personal flaws, Father David Anderton, the Catholic priest in a small Scottish parish, begins to discover what happened to the ideals of his generation, but it is his friendship with two rebellious teenagers, Mark and Lisa, that triggers the enmity, suspicions, and simmering hatred of a town that resents strangers. Reprint. "Always trust a stranger," said David’s mother when he returned from Rome. "It’s the people you know who let you down." Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends two local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happiness—his days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome. But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present.