Their Faces Were Shining

Hope Paterson tumbles into a water-filled hole on a building site at the mall and pulls a drowning child out. She reads it as a message from God: perhaps her marriage, her bond with her daughter and even her eating habits can start again. A few days later there is a car crash outside her office; the passenger is killed and the driver is gone, her clothes left behind. Then her daughter rings in tears: in a maths class, students rose up through the ceiling. The Rapture has come. Life both stops and goes on: the Dalai Lama is spotted laughing in the air above Fifth Avenue, churches are burned, penitents flog themselves, share prices soar and television launches a show to unmask the Antichrist. As society comes apart, Hope must fight first for the people she has failed to love well, and finally for herself.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Speculative, Satire, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2010

ISBN

9780864736291 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)