To be able to fall down in such a way that the same second it looks as if one were standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a walk, absolutely to express the sublime and the pedestrian — that only the knight of faith can do, and this is the one and only prodigy.
— S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Frederick Buechner is an accomplished novelist who is also an imaginative Presbyterian minister. This is his sixth novel since he began writing twenty years ago. Lion Country is about a twentieth century knight of faith who is able to fall down in such a way that at the same second it looks as if he were standing and walking. Leo Bebb is a former Bible salesman who now runs a mail-order ordination business out of his garage in Armadillo, Florida. His life is an absolute expression of both the sublime and the pedestrian.
The narrator of Lion Country is Antonio Parr, an ex-school teacher who meets Bebb in New York City and feels compelled to write a journalistic expose on him. He describes Bebb as a "plump and implausible man." Leaving his cat Tom and his sexless girlfriend, Antonio jets down to visit Bebb at his headquarters, the Church of Holy Love, Inc. There he talks with Bebb's wife Lucille, whose face "like the TV set, looked as if the color had been turned wrong." He meets Brownie, Bebb's assistant, whose gift is "to make the rough places of Scripture smooth." For instance, Brownie interprets: "It's not meet to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs — Poochie would be closer to the original meaning of G. Zuss." Then, there's Sharon, Bebb's sensual daughter, who teaches him the meaning of play.
After several encounters with Bebb, Antonio learns that he brought Brownie back from death after he was struck by lightning. He finds that he has revitalized the life of Herman Redpath, a "Chocolate colored Choctaw" millionaire. As a result of Bebb's influence on his life, Antonio finds the courage to accept the death of his twin-sister Miriam and to marry Sharon. He finally realizes that the holy man is a clown who bestows the lilt of life to those he meets.
Frederick Buechner's Lion Country is a sophisticated and highly controversial work which out to both astound and enrich Christendom — that is if Christendom is capable of accepting a modern day Kierkegaard.
