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Jesus Land: A Memoir Hardcover – September 6, 2005
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In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence - high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere - under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe.
This brutal, prison-like "Christian boot camp" demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins - sins that few of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David's determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page, a keenly moving ode to the sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCounterpoint
- Publication dateSeptember 6, 2005
- Dimensions6 x 1.25 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101582433380
- ISBN-13978-1582433387
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Product details
- Publisher : Counterpoint; First Edition (September 6, 2005)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1582433380
- ISBN-13 : 978-1582433387
- Item Weight : 1.12 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,814,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #27,505 in Women's Biographies
- #78,146 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Julia Scheeres is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jesus Land, a memoir about her relationship with her adopted black brother David. The brother and sister grew up in a small Indiana town and, as teens, were sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic together. The book explores the themes of race, fundamentalist religion, and the sustaining bond of sibling love.
Her second book, A Thousand Lives, will be published by Free Press in October 2011.
She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two daughters and works at the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
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I want to thank Julia Scheeres for being rawly vulnerable and in so doing, allowing us to feel, taste, hear, smell, and see the oftentimes ugly events of her childhood and teenage years. This book is yet another volume that I could not put down. Well, I did put it down in order to sleep, but it was just a two day read. Yes, I blocked out the universe as I fell into the despair and hope of young children. I so desperately wanted to jump right into her early life and knock some common sense into those who held physical power over her life. I am so thankful that Ms. Scheeres is now leading a healthy life, free of the craziness that others tried unsuccessfully to imbue into her soul.
Yes, get this book. Read "Jesus Land" to understand a little boy's and a little girl's survival in the face of craziness. Read it to hone your senses and pick up on cues of what may be taking place in your lives today. Read it because you must find inspiration in how normal, typical human beings can overcome what can truly be described as brainwashing, emotional torture, and horrible physical abuse.
Once you finish reading this book, read Ms. Scheeres other book on the Jim Jones/People's Temple massacre in Guyana, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown . In this second book, Ms. Scheeres provides the most detailed and historical accounting of the Jonestown massacre available.
Scheeres' prose is lucid, clear, never full of self-pity. She writes without a chip on her shoulder. Her real motive is to express her undying love for her younger brother David, for whom this memoir is dedicated to.
If you enjoy Scheeres' harrowing account, you might want to check out Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Samual Butler's The Ways of All Flesh.
The story is relatable in the sense that I was raised Calvanist and sent to boarding school, but not a heinously abusive one.
Her relationship with her brother tops all. I cried like a baby.
Thank you Julia Scheeres for sharing your story, and I mean share because now it is a part of me.
Also, thank you for writing your recent NYT article on raising children without a sin consciousness. If only we could all do that. I gave it my best try, but my years of indoctrination that I am at my core a sinner got in the way, causing me to be depressed and angry. You are absolutely a forerunner in this field of ex-vangelicalism.
I sometimes skip over the epilogue in a book, but make sure you read it. It brought me to tears and gives you more of an understand of how she was able to so eloquently tell this story.
I read memoirs frequently, and this is one of the best I've read.

