A Book of Common Prayer was published by Simon & Schuster in 1977, and it extends Didion’s examination of American failure from the domestic (California) to the international (Central America). Charlotte Douglas, the protagonist, is a well-meaning American liberal who has fled to Boca Grande — a fictional Central American country on the verge of revolution — after her daughter has disappeared into the American radical underground. Charlotte cannot understand the political violence around her because she cannot understand violence at all: she has lived her life believing in goodness, reason, and the possibility of mutual understanding.
The novel is narrated by Grace Strasser-Mendana, a dying American-born woman who has married into Boca Grande’s ruling family. Grace’s narrative voice — detached, ironic, unsentimental — provides the counterpoint to Charlotte’s persistent optimism: Grace knows that the world runs on violence, and that Charlotte’s innocence is not virtue but willful blindness.
Didion uses the Central American setting to explore a theme that would preoccupy her increasingly: the relationship between American foreign policy and American self-delusion. Charlotte is the personal embodiment of a national failing: the belief that good intentions are sufficient, that other people’s violence must have rational causes that can be addressed through dialogue and development, and that America’s relationship to the countries it intervenes in is benign.
Collecting A Book of Common Prayer
First edition (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1977): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $60–$150
- Signed first edition: $200–$500
- Without jacket: $10–$25