Uninspiring story with a not-so-hidden agenda.
Have yourself a conservative little Christmas.
Vaughan, a prolific Christian author of manly historicals and military novels under various pseudonyms (including female ones, for his category romances), takes up several ultra-right and back-to-the-Bible causes in this low-key holiday tale. Should the Inuits and just plain white folks of Point Hope, Alaska (which might sit atop undiscovered reserves of oil), believe the scaremongering of Clay Berber, an untrustworthy, tree-hugging, pointy-headed activist who once fought to have the Ten Commandments removed from a county courthouse? Our hero, Galen Scobey, steps up to the podium with the real facts: among them, the infamous Valdez oil tanker disaster had no lasting measurable effects upon Alaskan wildlife or environment. Galen, a single father to young Nels, is still haunted by the memory of his dead but much-loved wife Julia, who loved Christmas. And he’s troubled by his own responsibility for an oil-search accident that killed two New Guinea natives several years ago. Heck, that pretty little teacher, Ellie Springer, isn’t going to charm him out of his holiday blues by holding a Christmas pageant at the Tikigaq school. And hasn’t she ever heard of the separation of church and state? He won’t let Nels perform. The dispute ends up in court, where a muddled defense avers that since the government is supporting “faith in atheism” by upholding the law, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating a religious holiday in a publicly funded school system. What a miracle: the befuddled judge agrees in an unlikely ruling on behalf of the pageant. What a hero: Galen, lost in a storm on the tundra, follows a brilliant star back to Point Hope and joins the rejoicing townsfolk.
Uninspiring story with a not-so-hidden agenda.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-765-30947-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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