An ideal example of how fiction can be used to present and explore alternative concepts in history and religion.
A grounded retelling of Christ’s life and the early days of the church from the gospel of his ailing nephew.
In this fictitious gospel, Joseph ben Jude, the nephew of Jesus (called by his Hebrew name, Yeshua), sets forth to correct the emerging myths that threaten to taint Christ’s legacy. Not long after his death, Yeshua’s origins have become steeped in superstition, with tales of a virgin birth of the literal son of God. Joseph tells instead of the careful planning and mystical divinations of the Essene Jews who selected his grandparents, Joseph and Mary, to conceive this prophesied Messiah. Luck (Melissa Etheridge: Our Little Secret, 1997) presents an accepting, progressive Yeshua who mingled his rabbinical studies with the teachings of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, and the Buddhists. Joseph muses on Christ his uncle as much as Christ the Messiah, speaking at length about his father and other uncles, along with the extended family of Yeshua’s followers. Like in any family, there’s squabbling; the apostles struggle with how to lead after Christ’s death, and the public becomes confused and uncertain. These difficulties, along with competition and persecution from other religions, only serve to compound the misinformation Joseph seeks to debunk. Joseph’s prescience of the emergence of other philosophies is a clever conceit of the novel, which organically introduces gnostic and other alternative Christian teachings. Throughout the book, the resurrection is dissected as well, challenging the belief of Yeshua’s physical rebirth with the possibility of a spiritual one and breaking down the differences. These theories are impressively accessible and introduce new concepts that parallel fairly well-known historical and biblical events while using modern names for people and places throughout.
An ideal example of how fiction can be used to present and explore alternative concepts in history and religion.Pub Date: May 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1782799740
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Roundfire Books
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
After a slow-moving start, the action accelerates during the war sections, but Steel’s tin ear and simplistic prose, even...
Manhattan heiress, wrongfully shunned as an adulteress, becomes a medic in the Great War, then a Paris physician, confounding all her detractors, in this cliché-riddled, exposition-bound umpteenth from Steel (Rogue, 2008, etc.).
Annabelle Worthington, born to a prominent banking family, enjoys an idyllic childhood, until the fateful night when her father and brother go down with the Titanic. Annabelle’s mother, Consuelo, worries that the yearlong mourning period might scuttle 19-year-old Annabelle’s marriage chances. So Consuelo and confirmed bachelor Josiah, age 38, agree that he will marry Annabelle. After a lavish wedding at the Worthington’s Newport estate, Annabelle, who’s fond of Josiah, doesn’t question his wedding night reluctance to consummate their marriage. But when abstinence drags on for two years, amid Consuelo’s anxious queries about grandchildren, Josiah admits that he’s homosexual. When the divorce, citing trumped-up charges of adultery, hits the tabloids, her New York friends, including the miserably married Hortie, ostracize Annabelle. Her mother has died, and now Annabelle, sole heir to her family fortune, can pursue her lifelong interest in medicine. She heads for France to aid the war effort in a field hospital, and after beginning medical school in Nice as the only female student, serves as a medic and ambulance driver. Raped by a drunken British officer, viscount Winshire, she’s horrified to find herself pregnant. The viscount is killed, and Annabelle gives birth to a beautiful daughter, whom she names Consuelo. At war’s end, Annabelle opens a practice in Paris. Smitten, handsome surgeon Antoine welcomes her and Consuelo II to his family, then viciously turns on Annabelle when she reveals her past. But Lady Winshire, the rapist’s mother, is enthralled with her grandchild, whom she legitimizes. She urges Annabelle to ignore the scandalmongers. Now fortified by two family fortunes, mother and daughter head back to New York to reclaim their place in society.
After a slow-moving start, the action accelerates during the war sections, but Steel’s tin ear and simplistic prose, even more than the predictable plot, make for a leaden tale.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-34026-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the...
Sentimental, heartfelt novel portrays two children separated during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
In 1940s Seattle, ethnicities do not mix. Whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, and their children attend different schools. When Henry Lee’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his 12-year-old son’s shirt and enrolls him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless and at the mercy of schoolyard bullies. His salvation arrives in the form of Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom Henry forms an instant—and forbidden—bond. The occasionally sappy prose tends to overtly express subtleties that readers would be happier to glean for themselves, but the tender relationship between the two young people is moving. The older Henry, a recent widower living in 1980s Seattle, reflects in a series of flashbacks on his burgeoning romance with Keiko and its abrupt ending when her family was evacuated. A chance discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans during the evacuation inspires Henry to share his and Keiko’s story with his own son, in hopes of preventing the dysfunctional parent-child relationship he experienced with his own father. The major problem here is that Henry’s voice always sounds like that of a grown man, never quite like that of a child; the boy of the flashbacks is jarringly precocious and not entirely credible. Still, the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages while waiting for the story arc to come full circle, despite the overly flowery portrait of young love, cruel fate and unbreakable bonds.
A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-345-50533-0
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
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