Jesus Saves (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Oh she was high as they flew nowhere in particular in Ted's white Ford with the harelip fender..." (more)
Key Phrases: Sandy Patrick, Ruth Patrick, Deerpath Creek (more...)

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

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.com Sales Rank: #1,821,949 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tries hard, falls flat, February 10, 2000

By	Carrie Laben (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Darcey Steinke certainly deserves an A for effort. She's nailed the plot elements necessary to be hailed as a great dark artist in this end of the age - child abuse, dead moms and absent dads, detached sexy teenage girls, philosophical/religious critique of the cult of the suburbs... I have nothing against these elements in and of themselves, although some of them are starting to be overdone.

Unfortunately, her style combines Anne Rice's obsessive-compulsive love of irrelevant detail, the insistant grimyness of a latter-day rock star, and a Joyce-esque refusal to clearly distinguish thought from actuality, while lacking the redeeming gifts of any of the above-mentioned artists.

Darcey Steinke will probably write something good someday, probably a short story. Keep your eye out for that. Don't bother with this.

6 of 6 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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consider Me Saved, February 2, 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.