Alfred Chester

Alfred Chester dramatizes the old debate between belief and unbelief - between those who know with their heart and those who know only with their eyes - in this, his accomplished first novel, published in 1956 and long since become an underground classic. Our skeptic is Harry Sutton, an "indifferent" undertaker's assistant in a Brooklyn funeral parlor. Our believers are just about everybody Harry knows, including Emily, a disappointed but deeply romantic social worker; Wallace, an absurd, cynical, neglected minor novelist; Tess, Harry's lovely, uncomplicated sometime girlfriend; Tulley, a Roman Catholic priest torn between the cross, the ouija board, and the whiskey bottle; and Mark, a young man perhaps unhealthily curious about death. And what they all believe in - or want desperately to believe in - is Jamie. And who, or what, is Jamie? The answer, gentle reader, is up to you. With a memoir of the author by Harriet Sohmers Zwerling.

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