Elizabeth Genovise

Forty-one-year-old Abra, the narrator of Third Class Relics, gathers with her brother and cousins for an uncomfortable dinner the night after her father’s wake. No one speaks of the one missing family member—Jeffrey, the youngest cousin—nor of his doppelganger, Rupert, whose name Abra’s father cried out just before his death. When the evening comes to a close, Abra finds herself prowling her family’s history against her will. As she journeys through their darkest chapters, she is forced to confront the complex role Jeffrey/Rupert played in both healing and destroying them all, as well as the significance of her relationship with her cousin Andrei, who has spent twenty years blaming himself for the family’s defining tragedy. Third Class Relics recalls many Biblical myths, stories in which one person must perish so that those around him might be awakened to their inner darkness but also to their capacity for redemption.

In The Numismatist, a priest recalls a defining childhood summer during which his father's affair shattered his family. Befriended against his will by an elderly numismatist and a lonely neighborhood boy named Percy, the young James is forced to confront the realities of his parents' crumbling marriage, his fragile faith, and his own capacity for darkness. The temptation to project his resentment onto others slowly fades beneath the pressure of the love and inspiration he finds in his two neighbors, putting James on track to someday become a man of God.

In The Numismatist, a priest recalls a defining childhood summer during which his father's affair shattered his family. Befriended against his will by an elderly numismatist and a lonely neighborhood boy named Percy, the young James is forced to confront the realities of his parents' crumbling marriage, his fragile faith, and his own capacity for darkness. The temptation to project his resentment onto others slowly fades beneath the pressure of the love and inspiration he finds in his two neighbors, putting James on track to someday become a man of God.

In the opening story of Posing Nude for the Saints, the daughter of a prostitute falls in love with a Mennonite and finds herself torn between two worlds. ""Vincent"" spotlights a young husband who comes to terms with his wife's terminal cancer, confronting his own helplessness and terror. The title story follows a divorcee who responds to a Craigslist ad for boudoir photography and finds more than what she bargained for. In ""Food for the Gods,"" a widow shops for a last supper for herself and her unborn child; in ""Passion Play,"" a cynical lawyer has a chance to save a life. The central character in ""Almost a Wolf"" does quiet battle with a rural pastor who's made a critical mistake. In ""Citizens,"" two runaway children escape a violent home and live happily in an abandoned camper until the real world intervenes. In ""Irises,"" a woman in crisis learns her mother's deepest secret, and in ""Burn,"" a family of five vacations in a wild landscape that foreshadows their collapse. Set primarily in rural east Tennessee, the stories in Posing Nude for the Saints portray men and women whose souls are all exposed, and for whom redemption is yet possible.

Food – how it’s grown, how it’s shared – makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind’s first task: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one’s hands dirty raising one’s own food, then, doesn’t just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, “The Welcome Table,” comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible’s closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited – a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Köder, Carl Juste, André Chung, Ángel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.