Jesus Saves [Hardcover]

Darcey Steinke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

From one of the most daring young writers in America, Jesus Saves, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, is a suburban gothic that explores the sources of evil, confronts the dynamic shifts within theology, and traces the consequences of suburban alienation. Set in the modern launch pads of adolescent ritual, the strip malls and duplexes on the back side of suburbia, it's the story of two girls: Ginger, a troubled minister's daughter; and Sandy Patrick, who has been abducted from summer camp and now smiles from missing-child posters all over town. Layering the dreamscapes of Alice in Wonderland with the subculture of River's Edge, Darcey Steinke's Jesus Saves is an unforgettable passage through the depths of the literary imagination.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Is a kidnapping child molester less evil than a church congregation that wants its pastor to make his sermons more entertaining and to celebrate their prosperity as a visible sign of grace? Are we individually responsible for perverting the innocence of our children, or does our culture in general take the blame? These are among the disturbing questions posed by this bleak novel from Steinke (Suicide Blonde, Atlantic Monthly, 1992). It is set in an unnamed city somewhere in the South, where the downtown area has gone derelict and is surrounded by a suburban belt of subdivisions and strip malls and where a young girl has been kidnapped from her summer camp. Another young woman works as an assistant to her father, a Lutheran pastor who obsesses in his sermons about the missing girl. As the stories of the woman and the girl move toward their inevitable intersection, Steinke takes us on a Generation X tour through an American hell as vivid and upsetting as any imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. A powerful novel; for most collections.?Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A grim and often persuasive view of modern suburbia as the outer circle of hell. Steinke (Suicide Blonde, 1992, etc.) clearly knows the terrain well. Her portrait of a northeastern suburb, in which the well- ordered housing developments and antiseptic malls can't quite suppress the disorder lurking close by, is precise and convincing. Adolescent Ginger, the protagonist, is uneasily caught between those worlds. Her father is a minister, a sign of order and continuity in the community. But Ginger, who has watched her mother die slowly of cancer, senses that life is willful and violent. Even the remnants of the natural world around her--garbage-strewn lots and contaminated streams--seem to suggest decay. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, horribly scarred in an accident, is obsessed with death. (When they strike and kill a deer on a dark road, he cuts off the head as a trophy, and carefully describes to her the stages of its decomposition.) The clearest sign of disorder, though, is the disappearance of a local girl, Sandy Patrick, who's been kidnapped from summer camp by a child molester. Invisible to authorities, he drives his nondescript van, with Sandy tied up inside, aimlessly from one town to the next, smuggling the terrified and abused child into one seedy motel room after another. Ginger, desperate to find some purpose to life, becomes obsessed with Sandy's disappearance, and begins trying to puzzle out who the child was. Several chapters follow Sandy's horrific existence with ``the troll,'' the deranged figure who's keeping her captive. Ginger's wayward investigation finally brings her to an unexpected, violent confrontation with him. Charting suburban despair and ennui is not new terrain, but Steinke brings to her portrait a powerful dark lyricism, a sharp eye for character, and a seemingly natural gift for metaphor. This is angry, painful, disturbing fiction, its impact only slightly lessened by the occasional rhapsodic outbursts of some of the characters. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; 1st. ed edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871136937
• ISBN-13: 978-0871136930
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,727,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not terrible, November 1, 2006

By 

Angry Sigh "I'm not nice, but I am honest." (Manassas, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Saves (Paperback)

I skimmed over some of the other reviews, and pretty much everything I might want to say has been said, so I'll just tell you what's helpful.

Yes, the book is symbolic and slow-paced. It is, however, well-written, flowery prose that I enjoyed reading...to a point. The people who gave this book negative reviews were appalled by the graphic nature and the "misleading" title. Yes, the book is graphic, and not for children. In a couple of scenes, I would definitely even consider it pornographic. It describes certain things in a way that is both crude and poetic, if such a thing is possible (apparently it is).

I don't think the title is so much trying to mislead as it is trying to be ironic. If some people missed that, then it's saying something about the IQ of the reader, not the author.

Overall, I wouldn't say that this book has a wide appeal, but the author does have talent, so if you don't mind dark fiction, and a lack of a sound ending, give it a read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consider Me Saved, February 1, 2006

By 

apples - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Saves (Paperback)

I just went to buy this book for a friend and I was stunned by the low ratings and mixed reviews. This book does some emotional damage on its reader, but in the best possible way. The author picked up on our culture's fascination with child abductions years before the current media outbreak. There's something very prescient about the storyline.

A word about the language--it's surreal and strange and ultimately closer to poetry than prose. To me this is one of the book's great strengths. It's not an easy book, but it's a wild ride. Check it out.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good, yet difficult read, June 20, 2005

By 

Abby (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Saves (Paperback)

The title is not literal. The message of the book is not Christian. Jesus does not save anyone in the book. Don't read this if you're a conservative Christian nut who finds everything secular to be "evil". You will be quite disappointed and probably pretty irritated and offended.

Although this book was both confusing and difficult, it holds a lot of meaning, but the meaning is hard to understand, the symbolism hard to figure out. I think the author meant this book to be difficult in the way that the meaning is not just given to you. It's not "here you go kids, some milk and cookies, eat and drink and be merry", it's hidden, it's hard, you have to figure it out yourself, and the imagery and symbolism can mean different things to different people.

I agree with another person who has written a review who said that the plot was basically non-existent. It's not a book rich in plot, but rich in symbolism, and thought about life. Life is not always happy and merry and chirping birds and blue skies. People aren't perfect, they aren't happy, they keep secrets and do "bad" things. This book deals with reality and I beleive that's partially why some people don't like it. It's cold, but it's truth.