Cooper, an emotional mess since her boyfriend left her, decides to give Brooke’s church a try.  She stumbles into a Bible study group on her very first Sunday, and there learns that Brooke has just been murdered.  Study group members are deeply shocked to hear that Brooke’s husband has been arrested for the murder.  They know him well, believe that he and Brooke were deeply in love, and refuse to accept that he murdered her.

The group decides to investigate Brooke’s murder, and devises various strategies for doing so.  Cooper had found several scraps of paper stuck in the jammed copier; luckily she took them away with her instead of throwing them in the trash. She and others spend many hours reconstructing the paper and deciphering what’s printed on it; group members investigate the clues they find there.

Meanwhile, Cooper tries to get over her deadbeat ex-boyfriend, who left her with an enormous credit card debt and a broken heart.  Still, she pines for him.  Her thoroughly obnoxious sister, Ashley, constantly advises her on how to catch a man - professionally waxed eyebrows figuring heavily in these homilies.  Cooper feels her way into a relationship with Nathan, another member of the Bible study group, as they get ever more involved in the investigation.

The police tell the group to lay off and leave this to the professionals - it’s dangerous, folks - but of course they don’t listen, and find more ways to get embroiled, spreading sweetness and light along the way.

Stirring up Strife is oriented toward Evangelical Protestant Christianity, and the preaching is laid on with too heavy a hand.  Readers who share the author’s beliefs may find the book easier to read, but for me, the frequent preaching is intrusive and annoying.  It is possible for a writer to have great faith, and write of characters who follow the tenets of that faith, without drowning the reader in treacle.

The story itself, shorn of sermons, is actually pretty good.  While some of the characters are too thinly drawn to be interesting or convincing, Cooper is given enough personality to be likeable.  We have all known people like Cooper’s hypocritical sister Ashley, who attends church and professes to adhere to the faith, yet is clearly obsessed with Narcissus, the god of personal appearance.  Their parents and grandmother, on the other hand, come across as artificial ideals rather than real people, as do most of the study group members.

The writer seems compelled to mention Wal-Mart often in the story; what’s up with that?  Even if it were somewhere I shop, I’d dislike it being dragged in repeatedly.  If a real-life store were germane to the story, as in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that would be different, but Wal-Mart has no relevance to the tale whatsoever.

Who was Stirring Up Strife written for?  An audience who shares the author’s religion, and who might enjoy the opportunity to say “Amen” at least once per page, could argue that the book deserves a third star.  For the rest of us, who prefer not to be thumped upside the head with someone else’s religion, two stars is sufficient.  If, as is sometimes the case, the author is writing for herself, trying to express the soaring joy or deep tranquility afforded her by her faith, she somehow misses the mark; the expression is too forceful to be effective.  Joy and tranquility, like morality, cannot be forced. 

--Nancy McIntyre