Alan DonnellAlan Donnell remembers visiting the library as a child with his mother, who let him borrow Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He read the classic tome in a few days and then devoured the rest of the library's Dostoevsky collection. Three decades late, on a day hike in a deserted part of the Canadian Rockies, Donnell came up with the outline for his own novel about the Pope and the village of Manyberries.

As in absurdist fiction and medieval comedies, Donnell navigates the topsy-turvy world in The Pope Moves to Manyberries and uses laughter as good-if not the best-medicine. An ultimately optimistic riff on chaotic times, the book's subtext is his own marriage, which started to go sideways and ultimately went haywire. A retired architect, Donnell is now divorced with four children and four grandchildren and lives in B.C., where he still takes long hikes. Read More Read Less