HOLIER THAN THOU

In this debut novel, a freethinker dredges up ancient magic in the woods outside his cultlike village.

The Barnes Clan is a Christian sect that, like the Amish, eschews industrial technology. The Clan members embrace an 18th-century frontier settlement lifestyle in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, led by their fire-and-brimstone pastor, Father Andrew. Alex was an orphan discovered in the nearby forest as a baby. Though he grew up as an adopted member of the Clan, he’s always been a freethinker, reading as much as he could and scribbling his nonconformist ideas about God in his notebooks. This, coupled with his mysterious origins, makes him a figure of suspicion to many in the community. Alex has developed feelings for Miranda, one of the attractive young women who work for Father Andrew. But the pastor’s daughter, Libby, has her eyes on Alex and is willing to exploit her connections to get her way. As Alex navigates the religious and romantic politics of the Clan, his investigations of a cave in the woods lead him to ancient Indigenous practices regarding the worship of a deity known as the Forest King. Will his search lead Alex to deeper knowledge, or has he unlocked something that will shatter his life forever? Jameson’s premise is a fun one, and it escalates to progressively weirder levels as things go along. Unfortunately, the author rarely writes scenes, preferring to tell the tale as present-tense exposition. The result reads like a TV series about Bible stories: “In her mid-twenties like Libby, Delaney’s not only beautiful and sultrily curvaceous, but may be the most capable of all the young women, qualities which have captured the eye of all the men, granting her the power to match.” The sedate prose undercuts the deeper philosophical ideas that Jameson is grappling with, and the story never becomes fully immersive. It’s a shame since readers will easily imagine a more dynamic and dramatic version of the novel.

An imaginative but uneven tale about a claustrophobic religious community.