The Blood of the Lamb
The Blood of the Lamb is a novel by the American writer Peter De Vries, published in 1961 and widely regarded as his most personal and moving work. It follows Don Wanderhope, a man raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist community, through a life shaped by loss, doubt, and a search for meaning. The novel's emotional center is the illness of his young daughter, Carol, drawn closely from De Vries's own experience of losing a child to leukemia. Known for his comic novels, De Vries here blends his characteristic wit with deep grief, producing a book that moves between humor and devastation as it confronts the problem of suffering and the limits of religious faith. Both funny and heartbreaking, it has been praised as one of the most honest American novels about losing a child.
What you might want to know about The Blood of the Lamb
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A semi-autobiographical novel about a man whose faith is tested by the illness and death of his young daughter.
Largely. The illness and death of the narrator's young daughter draws closely on De Vries's own loss of his daughter to leukemia.
It was published in 1961.
The Blood of the Lamb was written by Peter De Vries, published in 1961 by Penguin (Non-Classics).
The Blood of the Lamb is 1 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Blood of the Lamb takes most readers under an hour to finish.
The Blood of the Lamb is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
