One More Sunday

by John D. MacDonald

Book Overview

Welcome to the Eternal Church of the Believer, where devout workers operate state-of-the-art computer equipment to solicit and process the thousands of dollars that pour in daily . . . where hundreds of prayers are offered by armies of believers . . . where some people give much more than they should. Its home is Meadows Center, some very expensive real estate on the outskirts of a sleepy Southern town, a jealously guarded complex of offices, houses,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394536738
• ISBN13: 9780394536736
• Release Date: February 1984
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Building of a Church

ONE MORE SUNDAY is not one of John D. MacDonald's classics, but it is worth a read today. I had to look back at the publication date after reading the opening pages of the sermon by John Tinker Mathews. It was like the narrative was freshly written just yesterday. Matthew Meadows built the Eternal Church of the Believer through radio and TV. But his children and administrators do not have the moral strength to step into his shoes when he is stricken with Alzheimer's. The disappearance of a young woman reporter coincides with the gradual disintegration of Mathew's religious empire. A good read. Nash Black, author of QUALIFYING LAPS.

Another Excellent MacDonald Mystery

Perhaps it is unfair to call this book a mystery, as it is an ambitious work with carefully drawn characters and a careful explanation of the culture and structure of a modern American megachurch. But MacDonald made his career as a mystery writer, and this book, like so much of his oeuvre, has a murder at the center of its plot. Whatever label you give you the book, it is a pleasurable read and an interesting portrait of an important aspect of modern American society. Though certainly not the most gripping of this very talented popular novelist's works, it is nevertheless a very engaging book. For several days I lived inside this novel, waiting for opportunities to return to its pages, and sinking happily back into the story whenever the opportunity presented itself. MacDonald started out with a good deal of talent as a mystery writer, but there was something in his nature that enabled him to keep getting better and better as the years wore on. He grew particularly adept at creating memorable characters, and getting deep inside their heads, and inside the mundane, but somehow profoundly engaging, details of their lives. The cast of characters in this tale will be familiar to any reader of MacDonald's books. We have people from all strata of society, and from many different professions. MacDonald's singular gift was to get inside the soul of America's middle and upper middle class, and to paint it in vivid colors in a style that instantly rings true. When MacDonald describes the owners of a failing motel that play a part in this story, you feel as if you were suddenly allowed into the back rooms of that crummy $50 a night cinder block wonder that you got stuck in when your regular reservations fell through. This is the real America, painted in deeply sympathetic and engaging colors. MacDonald also excels at creating portraits of our institutions. Buried in this work of fiction is a perfectly readable non-fiction account of American megachurches. These passages no doubt account for some of the other reviewer's comments that the book rambles, or contains overly long descriptions. These comments are fair, only I find MacDonald's descriptive passages fascinating. In this book he does a particularly good job of describing the role played by computers in the church's financial life. I find it amazing that a person of his generation came to understand computers so well at a time when most of the rest of the country was only beginning to understand that they even existed. MacDonald did a great job of researching this book, and takes us into the back rooms of a large, very wealthy organization, and shows exactly how it is put together. MacDonald's megachurch is part spiritual institution, and part big business, and he shows exactly how this unholy wedding of disparate institutions was forged out of the raw stuff of American life. This was one of MacDonald's last books, if not his very last. I've said that his skill as a writer increased over the yea

Extremely well written.

One More Sunday by John D. MacDonald is about a megachurch, even though I daresay the term megachurch was not in common usage at the time this wonderful potboiler of a book was written. The Eternal Church of the Believer, a wholy owned subsidiary of the charasmatic Meadows family, has a national following of loyal tithers, round the clock cable TV programming, plenty of valuable real estate and its own university. But lurking beneath the squeaky clean veneer of uncompromising religiosity is a culture of hypocrisy, greed, jealousy and sexual promiscuity. MacDonald skillfully uses this apparent paradox to craft several very interesting subplots including one centered around a murder investigation. This novel is quite remarkable for a number of reasons. Plenty of interesting characters, vividly descriptive prose, many inter-related plot threads (all quite compelling) and a few genuinely unexpected twists to the storyline. It is not an exaggeration to refer to One More Sunday as a tour de force. Very highly recommended.

A Fair Tale Dealing With Many Ideas

Even if I found the Travis McGee series a bit trying at times, I always believed that the late John MacDonald was one of America's finest mystery writers. Some of his stand alone books, especially Condominium and The Executioners (the novel Cape Fear was based on) were top notch action packed tales. In One More Sunday, MacDonald takes on a new target, the Mega-Church. While uncovering the sexual escapades, hypocrisy and financial misdeeds of his characters, he also paints a portrait of many good meaning and faithful people who truly have the best intentions, but get carried away in there execution. Religious figures can be easy targets, but MacDonald looks beyond the bad to show you both sides.

A typical MacDonald tour de force.

Having read all of the Travis McGee series and several of his novels, I recall this as being outstanding. Now my goal is to find the many other out-of-print books by this outstanding author.