The Language of Paradise

Set in nineteenth-century New England, this exquisite novel tests a woman's love against her husband's utopian quest. Sophy Hedge, the artistic daughter of the town's minister, falls in love with Gideon Birdsall, a troubled theology student studying with her father. Sophy is drawn to his intellect, passion, and spiritual nature, while Gideon glimpses in her a free soul unbound by convention. Yet Gideon's restlessness after they wed worries her, and she finds his friendship with Leander Solloway, the charismatic new schoolmaster, a cause for anxiety. When Sophy becomes pregnant, Gideon and Leander construct a faux Eden in a greenhouse as part of a daring experiment to discover the language of paradise, the tongue Adam spoke when he named the creatures of the earth. Sophy must decide whether to live and paint in the world her husband has made or leave to save her child and herself. Addressing the timeless issues of faith, art, and love, Barbara Klein Moss has also captured the fragility of human longing. "A linguistic tour de force." --Library Journal