Sacred Books & Sky Hooks
Sacred Books & Sky Hooks is a genre-bending literary thriller with occasional dollops of humor. Like Melville’s Moby Dick, it is punctuated by nonfictional discussions of a central subject. Instead of whales and whaling, this novel deals with the subject of founder myths: sacred stories told by and about founders of religious movements. And instead of being a tale of a quest on the high seas, it is a literary thriller featuring kidnapping, murder, and escape.
A former Washington lawyer and amateur comparative religionist puts three such myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of a contemporary start-up religion; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on a virtual stand and finds them all guilty of making questionable claims about their divine revelations. On publishing his findings, he becomes anathema to the religiously correct, engages his nemesis in a Western-style shootout, and finally finds solace in a faraway place.
A former Washington lawyer and amateur comparative religionist puts three such myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of a contemporary start-up religion; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on a virtual stand and finds them all guilty of making questionable claims about their divine revelations. On publishing his findings, he becomes anathema to the religiously correct, engages his nemesis in a Western-style shootout, and finally finds solace in a faraway place.
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI revives the recipe for the picaresque novel. Take a charming rogue of low estate; flavor with a menagerie of bizarre companions; put this comic hero in a dozen absurd situations; establish him as pope. Then serve as an outsize farce that makes the scandals of priests and their fondness for altar boys, to say nothing of cardinals and their fondness for confidentiality, look like copy for a slow-news day.
Benny Good’s misadventures lead him from a humble origin as an Amish foundling through stints as a novice evangelist, overland trucker, and radio talk show host, then achieving the office that includes the perk of being addressed as Most Holy Father. Beyond that, who knows?
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Benny Good’s misadventures lead him from a humble origin as an Amish foundling through stints as a novice evangelist, overland trucker, and radio talk show host, then achieving the office that includes the perk of being addressed as Most Holy Father. Beyond that, who knows?
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A semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age novel in which a young rogue learns why his great-grandma, a fine old Christian woman who spent her waning years stretched out on a cot in her daughter's parlor all dolled up in a black dress and a little silk hat and giving off old lady smells, had been married in a mosque way hell and gone out in the wilds of Central Asia.
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Growing up in a Mennonite family in Inverness, Idaho back in the forties and fifties, John Reisender is perplexed. Why had Great-grandma been married in a Muslim mosque way hell and gone out in the wilds of Central Asia? On the road to solving this puzzle, he finds himself excommunicated, temporarily, from the family religion. He discovers that his maternal grandfather had escaped Czarist Russia, acts as an undertaker for a cat’s funeral, takes a crash course in Nietzsche from the keeper of the city dump, escapes drowning, becomes an unsung, accidental semi-hero in a high school football game, cheats death on a spelunking expedition, and falls in lust with a pious girl who sports a derriere that reminds him of the WWII pinup girl, Betty Grable. With a Dickensian cast of characters brimming with eccentrics, Crazy Were We in the Head hilariously and often movingly chronicles a singular American boyhood.
The Church of the Comic Spirit
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One evening Father Alazon Lecher appears on a popular talk show to announce that he has received a series of revelations. Several God-sent angels, he says, instructed him to find and translate a set of twelve scrolls, then choose four disciples to help him interpret these scriptures-the Bear Lake Scrolls-and establish the Church of the Comic Spirit. The Scrolls, the original versions of some famous Bible stories, form the centerpiece of this novel. Each of the twelve tales has a distinct plot, style, and characters, who are cast in the roles of rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels. God is often the central character, though his role and traits change from story to story. The teachings of the church are set forth in a brief catechism consisting of answers to FAQs.
The Bear Lake Scrolls consist of twelve comic stories, of which the more famous Biblical tales are inferior imitations. Each story has its own distinct plot, style, genre (short story, film script, newspaper coverage of a congressional investigation, diary, series of letters to the editor), brand of comedy (wit, satire, parody, sex farce), and characters (Eve and Adam, Methuselah, Noah’s wife Elsie, Abraham and Sarah, Lot’s wife Jane, Moses, Job, Johan, David and Bathsheba, Goliath – all cast in the roles of schemers, rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels). God is often the central character, the comic hero, though his role and character change from story to story, just as in the standard Bible. Like every religion, the Church of the Comic Spirit has teachings. These are set forth in a short catechism consisting of answers to FAQs: Whether God really exists or whether somebody has just been posing as God? Whether sin is an art form? Whether women are smarter than men? Whether the profits generated by Bear Lake World, Inc., should be tax-free? Whether irreverence is the highest virtue? Whether laughter is the way to salvation? How many angels can dance on the edge of a hot tub? |
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Dancing Over the Rays of Light is set in a Kansas retirement home and environs. It touches on the humor and pathos of the elderly, who sit, gossip, and dream. It is narrated by a wee cluster of cells that wakes up one morning with no memory of who, where, or even what he/she/it is. On finding that he is a very old man, he proceeds to discover his reason for being with the aid of a yoga instructor, a set of fellow inmates, a teenage girl detective, a sassy scrap of wood, and a nip or two of hooch.
The novel plows much the same field as Jonas Jonasson of The 101-Year-Old Man fame and Paul Harding’s Tinkers, though with a distinctive blade. It uses some of the devices of such unconventional writers as Flann O’Brien and Don Barthelme. It also has a bit of magic realism in it.
The novel plows much the same field as Jonas Jonasson of The 101-Year-Old Man fame and Paul Harding’s Tinkers, though with a distinctive blade. It uses some of the devices of such unconventional writers as Flann O’Brien and Don Barthelme. It also has a bit of magic realism in it.
Just Another Dead White Male
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Ed Budwieser, an English teacher, comes to believe he is the reincarnation of Shakespeare. His wife and daughter don't believe it. His pastor has serious doubts. Only his grandson maintains a simple, childlike faith.
Like the legendary Walter Mitty, Budwieser has an active inner life, which is inhabited by visions of enjoying the company of younger and more beautiful women than his wife Mildred, who tries without success to be his reality principle. |
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Alone in a Dark Wood
Alone among Paul Enns Wiebe's works, this novel is of a serious bent, with occasional splashes of subtle humor.
A defrocked New England minister attends a San Francisco convention learning how to sell life insurance to seminarians. He accidentally encounters an old friend from seminary days who has been reduced to selling trinkets. On three consecutive days, the two have discussions in which they progressively reveal their most personal secrets to each other.
A defrocked New England minister attends a San Francisco convention learning how to sell life insurance to seminarians. He accidentally encounters an old friend from seminary days who has been reduced to selling trinkets. On three consecutive days, the two have discussions in which they progressively reveal their most personal secrets to each other.