The Next Queen of Heaven
by Gregory Maguire

From the guy that brought you Wicked comes this religious comedy.

The Scales family of Thebes doesn't have the best reputation in their small-town and that isn't helped when the mother Leontina gets bonked on the head by a statue of the Virgin Mary while stealing milk from the Catholic church. This leaves her speaking in tongues and leaves her normally trouble making daughter to take care of her and her brothers (and to stll make trouble). At the same time, the chior director Jeremy and his friends Sean and Marty are preparing their trio for a gay mens singing competition in New York, and the only place they can rehearse is in a convent with a bunch of nuns. Sounds like lots can go wrong? Yup. And a few things can go right.

The cast of characters is rich and imagined, and their antics are funny as hell. It's still peppered with some more serious issues (Sean is dying from AIDS, Kirk Scales is just coming to term with his sexuality, Jeremy is in love with a quasi-straight guy), but it's a humorous page-turner, a perfect book to read before saying your prayers and turning in for the night.

This has been a bobert review.