Book
Bothering God
An unflinching, character-driven novel about doubt, conscience, and the questions people are often afraid to ask.
Book Summary
After his final university lecture, historian Alistair D. Hargreaves begins a project in Hartwell St. Mary that starts as a detached study and quickly becomes something more personal. What begins with Tim Brooke's struggling parish grows into a journey through real communities and real people who refuse easy answers.
Across chapters with Father Patrick Delaney, Rabbi Sarah Feldman, Yusuf Hassan, Harpreet Singh, Vivek Sharma, Janet Okafor, and Mark Patterson, Alistair learns that listening carries obligations. At home, his marriage with Margaret and his distance from his son Daniel force him to face the same honesty he asks from others.
In the epilogue, he assembles a manuscript titled Bothering God with the subtitle What I Found When I Went Looking for Other People's Beliefs. He gives it to Margaret not as a finished verdict, but as a vulnerable beginning and a commitment to keep showing up.