Renovating Heaven.

Shelbey Krahn is a teacher-librarian and manages the School of Education's Curriculum Resource Centre at Laurentian University.

Andreas Schroeder’s literary novel is written in triptych—an exploration of Reinhard Niebuhr’s devotion to three loves (an island, a house, and Margarete Klassen) in the context of post–Second Word War immigration to Canada from West Prussia. Schroeder powerfully evokes the character and story of Reinhard Niebuhr, who is based on Schroeder’s own father, with exquisite detail, veined with humour wrought from exasperation and love.

The novel is narrated by Reinhard’s son Peter, who is five when the family arrives in Canada. Peter has a foot in both worlds, understanding his parents’ Mennonite faith and culture, yet very attracted to the culture of the “Englishers.” The alienated son narrating the stories of the father provides a perfect balance of intimate detail and insight, the objectivity of distance, and the unsettledness of a loving and angry witness—readers must ponder the hermeneutics of the story for themselves.

Reinhard is a Don Quixote figure. He imagines that he can win the hand of a woman who everyone agrees is out of his league and live on an island paradise or in a perfect house. He works slavishly toward these goals. The romantic in us yearns for him to succeed while the pragmatic wants to shake some sense into him. Can being faithful and devoted, steadfast to a laudable goal, be a character flaw? The characters, the narratives, and the questions stay with the reader for a long time.

Renovating Heaven is a first-rate Canadian novel, worthy of entry into the canon of Canadian literature. Anyone interested in Canadian literature, humorous literature, immigrant literature, Mennonite studies, or father-son dynamics would find this novel worth reading. Andreas Schroeder is a powerful storyteller, a master of language and humour.