The success of novels with the names Oke, Peretti, Thoene, and Lawhead on their covers has spurred evangelical publishers to produce more fiction. There is more variety, the quality is up, they are less preachy, and they are less self-conscious. More and more tell a story that provides old-fashioned entertainment.
Books that take the reader away from the hassle but at the same time nourish the spirit are among the best gifts a person can give (even if the gift is to oneself). With Christmas fast approaching, there are many novels to choose from. Some of the most popular are genre novels, such as westerns, spy thrillers, love stories, historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. People often buy their books according to the kind of story they can expect, whether it’s about the Old West, East Beirut, or a woman with unrequited love.
Spies And Cowboys
Sequoia Scout (Bethany, $5.95) continues the Saga of the Sierra, developed by Brock and Bodie Thoene when they saw how few westerns were being written for the Christian market. Over 175,000 copies of the four-book series have sold. Sequoia Scout tells how Will Reed, a simple trader gets caught up in the swirl of cultures in California: the newly independent Mexicans, the Mojave Indians, the Yokut Indians, and a few settlers. In Hard Winter at Broken Arrow Crossing, by Stephen Bly (Crossway, $7.95), Stuart Brannon can’t just hole up in his cabin. He must brave several blizzards, rescue a stranded family, and secure food. He must also face the age-old question: Why does God allow suffering? Each novel is a page turner full of heroes who try to do the right thing with integrity and godliness.
A sort of woman’s western, A Woman Named Damaris, by Janette Oke (Bethany, $6.95), tells of a young woman who hops a wagon train west as she runs from her father’s alcoholism. She helps a young mother care for her energetic children until she reaches the frontier town of Dixen. Despite near-crippling shyness, she finds the meaning of her name, new friends, and a young family whose need is greater than her own. Janet Oke has over 8 million books in print, but her popularity does not detract from the simple, literary quality of stories that stand alongside those of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Christian writers have tried their hand at creating spy thrillers (James L. Johnson’s Sebastian series is a fine example). Now John Haworth joins them with Henry Stanwick, a limestone geologist who finds himself entangled in international espionage. Continuing a story begun in Heart of Stone, Rock of Refuge (Crossway, $9.95) finds Stanwick married and traveling to East Beirut to save a friend who has been taken hostage by a Lebanese warlord. It isn’t long before Stanwick realizes the Group, a mysterious organization he tangled with in Madagascar, is behind the kidnaping. In Rock of Refuge, Haworth adds some new twists to the spy novel and offers an apocalyptic vision that leaves the reader with hope.
Through The Ages
For the reader who enjoys a good love story, there is Fragile Dreams and Old Photographs, by Elizabeth Gibson (Bethany, $8.95), a wonderful story about a woman in love with a family that has taken her under its wing when her parents divorced. Margaret is best friend and roommate of Ellie McEnroe and loves Ellie’s brother Don, but it takes a tragedy for Don to return her love. Fragile Dreams shows how unrequited love can break down walls and open a person’s eyes to God’s love.
A peasant and her mistress grow in their friendship, and their love for the special men in their lives matures in The Crown and Crucible, by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella (Bethany, $8.95). Set in nineteenth-century Russia, the novel offers insight into the current upheaval in the Soviet Union as its characters’ lives are intertwined with the political turmoil surrounding the ineffectual Czar Alexander II.
Fans of biblical fiction will be happy to note two good choices. In The Master’s Quilt, by Michael J. Webb (Crossway, $8.95), a Roman officer witnesses the death, burial, and disappearance of Christ. Deucalion Cincinnatus Quinctus knows the official statements have been altered, but he must contend with Pilate’s guilt, Herod’s ambition, and Saul’s violence. Escape from Ephesus, by Lance Webb (Nelson, $9.95), fleshes out Paul’s shortest letter in the Bible, Philemon. Son of a Roman aristocrat, Onesimus is sold into slavery. He resents his servitude and escapes, seeking freedom at all costs.
A bit closer to our own time, The Hawk and the Dove, by Penelope Wilcock (Crossway, $7.95), and The Finnsburg Encounter, by Matthew Dickerson (Crossway, $9.95), are stories of monks and kings in the Middle Ages. The first is a collection of warm, wise tales of souls facing life’s big questions: Where do I belong? How do I handle failure? The Finnsburg Encounter expands the Beowulf retelling of the story of Finn, king of Freisans, and Hildeburgh, daughter of the king of the Danes, who married to unite the kingdoms. Seeds of betrayal are sown by three brothers, and Christianity is planted by a young monk.
An Ordinary Exodus, by Roger Bichelberger (trans. by Toby Garfitt, Lion, $19.95), is reminiscent of old newsreels showing miles of people trudging with wagons piled high with possessions. The villagers of Lastingen-Lorraine flee the Nazi occupation and settle for a while in the south of France where they discover there is more to the village simpleton than they first thought. This lyrical novel shows what happens to a community with a holy fool in its midst.
Imaginative Spins
Another popular genre for Christian authors is the fantasy novel—perhaps because it is easier to show spiritual truths when the imagination is given free rein. In Whalesong (HarperSan-Francisco, $8.95) and White Whale (HarperSanFrancisco, $15.95), poet Robert Siegel performs the imaginative task by swimming inside a whale’s flesh. He reveals the world through whales’ eyes. Whalesong tells how the humpback whale Hruna looks for God, showing how he draws near to the heart of the world. White Whale tells how Hralekana, a white humpback, travels throughout the world, exploring sunken ships, encountering oil spills, getting beached and shot by humans.
Harold Myra, in Children in the Night (Zondervan, $9.95), creates a world without light. Yosha, an orphan and outcast, searches for a deeper spiritual reality than mere liturgy. Asel, a young woman initiated into a woman’s society similar to that of the Amazons, seeks the lost in the world of the damned. They marry to unite forces as their people battle foreign invaders.
Even though Walter Wangerin’s Elisabeth and the Water-Troll (HarperCollins, $14.95) is ostensibly for children, its moral is for everyone, teaching the possibility of love from ugly, mysterious creatures and showing the evil that ordinary people’s fear can spawn.
After the westerns, the spy thrillers, the biblical fiction, and the fantasy, a reader may long for a story of ordinary people in a contemporary setting. Brothers for Life, by Keith Wander (Crossway, $8.95), portrays four fraternity brothers meeting at a wedding and finding that their lives have not measured up to their expectations. Before they know it, the reunion has developed into a murder mystery. The story is told with compassion, humor, and grace.
By Katie Andraski, a poet and writer living in Rockford, Illinois.
