The Book of Bebb is a tetralogy of novels by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. Published in 1971 by Atheneum, New York, Lion Country is the first in the Book of Bebb series. It was followed by Open Heart (1972), Love Feast (1974), and Treasure Hunt (1977). In 1972 Lion Country was named a finalist in the National Book Award for Fiction. The Book of Bebb is an edited single volume edition containing the four novels, and it was published by Atheneum, New York, in 1979.
The Bebb novels revolve around the figure of Leo Bebb, a clergyman with a shady past, and are narrated by his son-in-law, Antonio Parr. Leland Ryken, Philip Ryken, and Todd Wilson suggest that the story raises the issues of "using one's ministry to escape from and rectify one's past, using proof texts from the Bible to justify one's actions with no accountability, placing ministry ahead of family, and presenting the gospel through outlandish and sometimes fraudulent means."
Summary of the plots
Lion Country (1971) Antonio ‘Tono’ Parr’s life is held hostage by paralysis. His sister’s protracted decline in the cancer ward of a hospital in Manhattan engenders in Tono a slowly increasing sense of numbness, as he is gradually overwhelmed by grief. Faced with the death of this, the last living member of his family, and with the growing tragedy of his own life, which is characterised by listlessness and failure in all areas – from romance to sculpting, and from teaching to writing – Tono is galvanised into action by his discovery of an advertisement for a mail order theology diploma: ‘Put yourself on God’s payroll – go to work for Jesus now’, the advertisement reads, with a payment address at ‘the Church of Holy Love, in Armadillo, Florida’.Buechner, Fredrick. Lion Country. New York: Atheneum, 1971. p.6. Resolving to write an exposé of the scheme with the hopes of publishing it in a prestigious New York publication, Tono finds himself face to face with its creator, the mercurial Leo Bebb. The novel opens as Bebb parts from Tono, descending down into a subway station on Lexington Avenue, leaving the would-be investigative journalist to ponder over their extraordinary meeting ‘in a lunchroom between Third and Lexington in the Forties someplace, all tiled walls and floor like a men’s room’. Bebb, he remembers with a sense of distaste, had ordered ‘chocolate milk, which he sweetened with sugar’, before quietly declaring that the man at the counter was an angelic being.Buechner, Fredrick. Lion Country. New York: Atheneum, 1971. p.5.
Fascinated, and still insisting to himself that his motivation is righteous and research-based, Tono follows Bebb down to Armadillo, Florida. Though he has not informed anyone there of his decision to travel, Tono’s arrival in Armadillo is unsettling. Bebb is not there, having flown to Texas on “the Lord’s business”; Tono is greeted by Laverne Brown, his assistant pastor, but is surprised and not a little unnerved to learn that Brown is expecting him, having been informed by Bebb that he would come.
Despite refusing Brown’s offer of a room at the manse, claiming to have already paid for a room in a local motel, Tono cannot refuse an invitation to spend the evening with Brown and Bebb’s wife, who, he discovers, is an alcoholic. Tono’s attempt to investigate The Church of Holy Love, Inc. is thwarted by Bebb himself, who lifts the inquiring mind of the would-be journalist away from his apparently shady dealings and his wife’s dark past, and fixes it upon the fair frame of his adopted daughter, Sharon. This proves to be more than a distraction as, following several liaisons at the motel, Tono and Sharon fall in love. Their gradual unburdening to one another, and their joint exploit with Bebb to a local safari park, where the bald preacher terrifies Tono by nonchalantly climbing out of the car to take a photo of two lions in the act of mating, acts to draw Tono out of himself, and to slowly loosen his grip on his past failings and present sense of paralysis. As such, when he is urgently called back to New York by his sister, Miriam, who is desperate to see her children one last time before she dies, not only is Tono able to go by aeroplane, a mode of travel that would have been previously inconceivable for him, but when he arrives he easily facilitates this final meeting, and is able to offer comfort and council to his sister, his nephews, and their indolent father, Charlie. Bebb’s journey to Texas has yielded fruit in the form of a wealthy new benefactor, Herman Redpath, a native American businessman who is convinced that Bebb’s prayers for him have brought a guarantee of good health and continued prosperity. Thus, Tono’s final conclusions are no less confused and uncertain than his expectations at the outset of the novel: perhaps Bebb is the real deal, perhaps he is not. The couple are married at Bebb’s new home on the Redpath ranch, where the industrious preacher is engaged in building a new Church of Holy Love, and extending his ministry across the USA.
Open Heart (1972) The death of the aging native American businessman, Herman Redpath, signifies a change in circumstance for Leo Bebb, his wife Lucille, and their friend Brownie – assistant pastor of the Church of Holy Love, and Dean of Bebb’s mail order seminary enterprise, The Gospel Faith College. Having spent five years performing the role of private pastor on the Redpath ranch, Bebb is delighted to be remembered generously in the deceased businessman’s will. Finally conferring sole stewardship of the Church of Holy Love upon Brownie, the preacher speedily moves north to Connecticut, where Tono (now known by his full name, Antonio) Parr has settled with his wife Sharon, their baby, and his two teenage nephews, Chris and Tony.
Arriving in Connecticut, Bebb rents a farmhouse nearby Antonio and Sharon’s home, and immediately sets to work transforming its largest barn into a chapel, complete with his trademark neon sign: a cross, its horizontal formed of the word ‘OPEN’ and an adjoining heart emblem, and its vertical formed of the word ‘HEART’. Antonio, whose life as a father, English teacher, and amateur sculptor is hazy and unrewarding, numbly observes Bebb’s energetic efforts to launch this new ecclesiastical endeavour. Disillusioned by his failed attempts to enthuse his students about King Lear, Antonio is beset by a dawning realisation that all is not quite right within his house. Sharon, who Dale Brown characterises as ‘a woman of the 1970s’, appears occupied with her yoga, speed-reading, guitar lessons, and the comfortable domesticity of motherhood and life in the north-East – including trips to the local school playing fields, where the sixteen-year-old Tony spends much of his free time as the star of the school track team.
His church finally ready for its congregation, Bebb sends out the ads and throws open the doors, only to be greeted by a small flock, not consistent with the exclusive New England crowd for which he had hoped. Determined to go ahead, however, he ascends the pulpit in his robes, and proceeds to preach on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. During the sermon, Lucille Bebb rises unsteadily to her feet, and leaves the chapel. When she goes missing several days later Antonio is unable to fully participate in the search for her, having learned in the intervening days that his wife and his oldest nephew, Tony, have been passionately engaged in an affair. Upon realising, following a heavily coded telephone conversation with Brownie, that Lucille has fled south back to Florida, Bebb and Antonio make their way down to Armadillo, only to discover that she has committed suicide.
Overcome with grief and forced to pick up the pieces of his shattered life, Bebb moves in with Sharon, Antonio, and their family. Into this new, strange, and restless existence steps Clarence ‘Fats’ Golden. A mysterious figure, who has hovered on the periphery throughout the story, Golden finally reveals himself as Bebb’s old cellmate from his days in prison. Charged with indecent exposure, the details of Bebb’s incarceration have long remained hidden to both Sharon and Antonio, who are greatly surprised by Golden’s revelations. The couple are left uncertain of the truth, however, when Bebb suggests that they should not believe his stories, and proposes a holiday to Europe. The three set sail for England, with Bebb still inwardly processing his grief, while Sharon and Antonio consider the prospect that their marriage might be in need of saving.
Love Feast (1974) Leo Bebb’s friendship with a wealthy septuagenarian, Gertrude Conover, which began while on the voyage to England at the close of Open Heart, becomes the basis for a new, explosive ministry partnership. A theosophist with blue hair and a house in Princeton NJ, Gertrude informs Bebb of their love affair in a previous life, in which he, a priest named Ptah-Sitti, had impregnated her, a ward of the Pharaoh, named Uttu. Bebb is enchanted.
The commencement of their partnership, however, is delayed by circumstances, not least the fallout of Lucille’s suicide. Bebb, confronted by the collapse of his ministry in Connecticut, returns to the Redpath ranch in Texas, there to pick up the pieces with Brownie. Antonio, meanwhile, is confronted by the slow disintegration of his marriage. Sharon has opened a health food store with her friend, Anita Steen, and Antonio suspects that the two have begun a romantic affair together. Alone, but for occasional visits from Gertrude and Bebb who have taken to going on extravagant holidays together, Antonio is paralysed by the situation, until Sharon tells him to leave the house – a command with which he meekly complies. Returning from another holiday, Bebb is greatly troubled by the breakdown of their marriage. It is Sharon’s rejection of his proffered prayers, however, and her revelation that she does not believe in God, that sends the stunned Bebb into a crisis of his own.
Laid up and in mourning at Gertrude Conover’s retreat centre in Princeton, Bebb is roused from his stupor by her suggestion that they throw a Thanksgiving meal for students in the area. When only a small number turn up to a banquet prepared for over a hundred, Bebb preaches from Luke 14 – the parable of the great feast – and sends his inspired guests out into the highways and byways in search of the hungry, the lonely, and the passer-by. In an extraordinary string of events consonant with the contemporary ‘Jesus Movement’, the banquet hall is filled with hungry guests, and a revival, led by Bebb and a young woman named Nancy Oglethorpe, breaks out in Princeton.
While Bebb is celebrating this, perhaps his most far-reaching spiritual coup, Antonio is pitched even further into depression. Any enthusiasm that he has gleaned from the revival movement is short-lived, and his English lessons are tinged with bleakness. He is finally devastated by news that Tony and Sharon have resumed their affair – his nephew having moved back into the house where it began several years earlier. His decision to retreat to Gertrude Conover’s centre in Princeton yields little comfort, as he discovers Bebb embroiled in a battle with a professor of history, Virgil Roebuck, whose atheistic rants are disrupting the preacher’s meetings.