Jesus Land, a Memoir
by Julia Scheeres
The vital stats:
voice in present tense,
white girl growing up in the mid 80s in rural Indiana
two adopted black brothers.
a homelife that honed a sense of Irony.
This book uses to frame the plot an interracial, religiously fundamentalist (read: dysfunctional) family, but really its all about Julia and her adolescent responses to these. Julia sneaks swigs of Southern Comfort before heading out in the morning for high school in rural Indiana where she eats junk food for lunch in the basement next to a vending machine. Sometimes she denies her brother David (the other has stolen the car and disappeared), other times she is his staunch supporter. The book is dark but not humorless, creepy but not without redemption. The irony is apparent where Christian virtue is in-apparent, even down to a disappointed missionary mother who espouses it while claiming, “I can’t wait until you kids get out of here so I can do my real work…the Lord’s work.”
Here’s Powell’s on it:
http://www.powells.com/biblio?show=TRADE%20PAPER:USED:9781582433547:9.50#synopses_and_reviews
Next Reads:
Muriel Sparks, The Girls of Slender Means
Haruki Murakami, After Dark
