The Power and the Glory (Graham Greene)

This highly acclaimed novel by a well-respected author tracks an unnamed priest on the run during a time when Mexico declared the Church to be illegal and the priesthood to be treasonous. He knows he's not a very good priest; he drinks, he had sex with a parishioner and has a daughter, he is too focused on his own ambitions to think much about his flock. On the other hand, he can't bring himself to completely turn his back on his faith, so he runs. Little by little the police, led by a Lieutenant whose hatred of the church is second to none, close off his escape routes, and he is finally trapped. This book raises interesting questions about the nature of faith and of God, and what it means to be a godly person in a broken world. I'm sorry to say that I wasn't able to connect with the story or the characters very much, so I pressed to the end out of a sense of duty, much as the unnamed priest did.