"Why you want to moove 'ere for? The mines are shuttin' down. Everybody's leavin'." This question comes from a gas station attendant to the prospective new minister in town sets the scene for Robert Jones' first novel. The incredulous young man is just the first of the many characters we meet in in the pages of Whence the Healing Stream Doth Flow, the story of a young minister embarking on his life's journey. Set, as it is, in a different place and time, it affords the reader a long look at a congregation of Welsh Presbyterians in a coal mining region of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Robert Jones has put a practiced view of rural America into a story that is sweet, exasperating, and funny-not laugh­ out-loud funny, but some real wisdom punctuated with giggles, lots of big, wide smiles and, of course, some tears. It's good writing. The Christmas chapter could be a seasonal read.