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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Billy - a novel about a movie about a real person, January 13, 2009
This review is from: Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything (Hardcover)
The plot of the book is this: a reporter is interviewing a person on his deathbed. In flashbacks, Charles Templeton is talking about the early days of Billy Graham. The reporter is trying to find scandal in Graham's life. Templeton is trying for one last time in the spotlight.
Templeton had been a colleague and mentor to Billy Graham. Eventually, however, he decided that he had too many questions about his faith and gave up his pastorate, gave up his preaching, identified himself as an agnostic, and had a second career as a newspaper reporter.
Templeton talks, in answer to questions by the interviewer, about Graham's early life, decision to be a Christ follower, college mishaps, dating and marriage, and major struggle with his own faith in the Bible.
By focusing on the early years, the years before his big success, this book shows the pieces of Graham's life that can be overshadowed by later years. He attended three colleges before ending up at Wheaton (full disclosure, my college, too). He dealt with people who were pretty legalistic about what counted as church. He was a preacher and then a speaker and then a college president before ending up in the crusade preaching career that most of us know him for. These sections, this thread through the book, is great.
I struggle, however, with other elements.
1. Style of writing. It reads like a book that was written to describe what was on the screen. I want a book to be a book, not an adaptation of a screenplay. I want a book to be about the subject, not about what you are seeing on the screen.
2. Fictionalization. This book is a story about Billy, with elements made up to tell the story. Thus, there are parts of Graham's story that I recognize. There are parts that I think, "Ah, that's how it happened." However. The whole reporter/flashback element of the book is made up to tell the story. As far as I know, there never was this interview with Templeton. I'm guessing that the scene at the end, where the adult Billy comes to visit the adult Charles, never happened. As a result, I'm not sure what is true about conversations that Billy may have had and what isn't.
3. Dramonic License - One part of Graham's biography that is particularly compelling is his decision to depend on the Bible as true and trustworthy. If you ever have heard him preach, the phrase "the Bible says" is a foundation of his argument. And I know that there was a time early in his ministry that he made a conscious decision to trust. In this book, that decision is dramatized as a scene on a hilltop, with the devil as a character having lines and stage directions. And it feels strange.
I liked what was novel about the Grahams, but less novelization would help. Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This Is Not the Book to Read About Billy Graham, February 4, 2009
This review is from: Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything (Hardcover)
Billy Graham remains one of the most iconic figures of our age: a man who has loved & devotedly followed Jesus Christ and worked his entire life to make Him known, while keeping his integrity & humility intact. Any book that shared his early life & crisis of faith would be a worthwhile read.
Or so I thought, until I read this book.
The entire book is framed around an entirely fictional interview of Charles Templeton, an early friend of Billy Graham who turned away from Christianity. Why such a literary device for either this book or the original movie? If the writer's purpose was to simply communicate moral truth via drama, then use historical fiction (Mel Gibson's The Patriot is an obvious example). But if he wanted to let people know what great things God has done in a real person's life, why mix truth with fantasy? I don't know.
And if you are going to chronicle a person's life, by all means do not suddenly put in a sudden imaginary conversation among angels and description of titanic spiritual warfare including Satan personally targeting young Billy's soul which is pure fantasy speculation. Awful. I sincerely hope that Reverend Graham never reads this book; I am convinced he would be deeply hurt.
My advice: if you really want to learn about this man of God, skip this book and instead read Graham's own excellent autobiography Just As I Am.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A look at Graham's crisis of faith that almost destroyed his ministry..., September 30, 2008
This review is from: Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything (Hardcover)
I recently was sent a manuscript for the book Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything by Bill McKay and Ken Abraham. I've read and reviewed other books about Billy Graham, but not any that restricted itself to the beginning stages of his ministry told in narrative form. This book is meant to coincide with a soon-to-be-released movie titled "Billy: The Early Years." In the book, the authors tell the story of Billy Graham's ministry through the eyes of his one-time partner, Charles Templeton. The scene is a hospital, where Templeton is living out his last days with Alzheimer's. An aging reporter, eager to revive her flagging career, has been told to interview Templeton in order to get some dirt on Graham... be it scandals, hypocrisy, or whatever. She sets up in the hospital room with a camera crew and starts the interview, trying to get Templeton to turn on his former colleague. But much to her dismay and amazement, Templeton's cynicism over what Graham believes and preaches is not enough to overcome the fact that he can find no fault in Graham. He knows that however much he belittles the beliefs he used to share, he can't deny that Graham has accomplished far more that should have been humanly possible given his background and skills.
The flow of the story starts back in Graham's teen years, before he became a Christian. After going forward at a tent-style revival, he decides that he wants to attend a bible college and move into some sort of ministry work. Much to his shock and surprise, he's asked to speak in front of a church. Terrified, he covers the breath of his Bible knowledge in rapid-fire fashion... taking an entire seven minutes. But there's something there, and he's asked to speak in more locations, eventually leading to a full-time pastor position. Along the way, he meets and marries his wife Ruth, who gives up her dream of becoming a missionary to Tibet to support Graham in his ministry. As his preaching and evangelism starts to pick up speed, he's eventually teamed with Charles Templeton, an extremely popular and well-known evangelist at the time. They seem to make a good team, but Templeton's life is getting much darker...
Templeton is starting to question his faith, and it comes to a head at the end of World War II. He sees a newsreel showing Holocaust survivors, and decides he can't believe in a loving God any more. Graham is crushed by his decision to leave the ministry and study at Princeton. This turning away by Templeton starts Graham down the path of questioning his own commitment. The story moves to a moment in time where Graham struggles with his fears and doubts by himself out in the woods at a conference. The ultimate outcome of that war would end up changing the face of world evangelism as we know it.
Unlike some of the other books on Graham that attempts to analyze all his works and actions, this is a more story-driven treatment of his early life. I'm sure that once the movie is released, I'll find that this book follows very closely to the timing and direction of the film. Still, it's an inspirational look at someone who has committed everything to what he believes. It also shows that particular moments in time can have ramifications *far* beyond what one might expect at the moment.
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