Chaotically plotted, but brings this turbulent age to vibrant life with sympathetic characters, both minor and major.
A down-to-earth Virgin Mary fields offers from Joseph and Pontius Pilate.
Romanian-born novelist/memoirist Popescu (Footprints in Time, 2008, etc.) grafts the story of adolescent Mary onto the dilemma of Eve, who was, he intimates, set up by the Creator to be both the repository of humanity’s hopes and the mother of all scapegoats. When Mary’s not puzzling out sexual politics, she’s the de facto leader of her clan, which has been exiled from Nazareth by King Herod the Great. We first see her through the eyes of handsome young Roman Apella (aka Pontius Pilatus). The last scion of a family executed by Augustus Caesar, he has been appointed through a convoluted chain of happenstance to be Augustus’ spy in Israel. Although he’s pledged to marry Caesar’s niece, Apella is immediately smitten with 17-year-old Mary, who saved her tribe from certain death in the desert by discovering a well, and offers her the status of a favored bondwoman in his household. Mary, though attracted to Apella, loves Joseph, a woodcarver apprenticed to her father, who disappeared during the Jewish gang wars (fomented by Herod) that drove her clan out of Nazareth. As the Nazarenes, assured by Apella of Herod’s forgiveness, prepare to return home, Mary learns that Joseph, who has made a fortune sculpting statues, is now betrothed to the daughters of the competing gang leaders and is requesting Mary’s hand as third wife. Stung, but not considering bondwoman-ship an acceptable alternative, Mary climbs Mount Barak to consult the Creator himself. He tells her, in effect, that all she has to do is wait for the men to make their usual hash of things. Sure enough, the gang leaders perish or flee, removing their daughters as competition. Popescu ingeniously skirts the thorny question of the virgin birth: Mary seems to have gotten pregnant the old-fashioned way. Or has she?
Chaotically plotted, but brings this turbulent age to vibrant life with sympathetic characters, both minor and major.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3263-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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