The Dean’s Watch
is an apologetically Christian book by a Anglo-Catholic writer who was
popular in the mid-20th century and is little known now. Elizabeth
Goudge was a clergyman’s daughter who grew up in English cathedral
towns that provided background for her novels. The Dean’s Watch is set in a remote
cathedral town in the Fens of East Anglia in the mid-19th century.
Cathedral Dean Adam Ayscough is impaired by a misinterpreted shyness
that drives people away. Watchmaker Isaac Peabody was turned off to
religion by his stern clergyman father and has never set foot in the
cathedral. They strike up an unlikely friendship that spills over to
other townsfolk. The cast of characters includes the disagreeable
sister with whom Isaac lives, their good-natured housekeeper, a
talented castaway who courts her and apprentices with Isaac, the dean’s
cold younger wife, a charming little girl who takes to the dean, and an
old spiritually advanced woman who was one of Adam’s few friends as the
story begins. The message of the book is that love awakens and heals.
Goudge’s best-known book may be Green
Dolphin Country (1964) because it was adapted into the movie Green Dolphin Street.
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