Chapter One

ALL OF PEACE LUTHERAN'S members were connected to Sylvan Beach's tourist trade. Those who didn't work at the carnival waitressed at the restaurants or worked at the gift shops that catered to the upstate New York factory workers who came to wade along Lake Oneida's muddy shoreline. In July and August, when whole families were busy frying onions at the sausage-sandwich stand or operating the Ferris wheel, my father was lucky to get a dozen people in the cottage that served as a makeshift chapel. But in winter, when snow rose to waist level and the pipes froze and the carnival shut down, and only the Sea Shell restaurant, a few bars, and the bowling alley remained open, church membership swelled to seventy and every folding chair was filled.

During those cold months laundry hung outside stiffened and the fire department came often to our house to fill up the bathtub with drinking water. In spring, mayflies clung to the side of the rectory, their black bodies so thick against the ground that for a few days the earth appeared in swarming turmoil. My father, with his blond hair, black suit, and clerical collar, seemed everywhere at once, teaching religion classes at the local elementary school, visiting the hospital and the nursing home. He often had coffee with parishioners at the Sea Shell and he bowled in the men's league. Frustrated with the shabby cottage, he persuaded a member to donate land for a real church. The congregation was too poor to bankroll a building, so he went to the synod office in New York City. The loan officer in charge of God's Bank was a tall man with a thin mustache. He congratulated my father on getting

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