So now we're at the final "land" title from my nightstand. What better way to end our journey than with a look at Jesus Land. This memoir from Julia Scheeres is a heart-breaking work of Christian America. The story starts with a sixteen-year old Julia and her adopted brother David exploring their new home- a small town in rural Indiana. The reader is transported back to familiar territory; a land they've seen in countless movies. Movies like Footloose, Stand By Me, Hoosiers, etc. This is small-town America in the middle of the century. We automatically know what to expect and we find the stereotype we've come to assume. The first half of the book is filled with angry jocks, ignorant rednecks, and well-meaning, but prejudiced Christians. The collective of characters is exactly what the author has been preparing you for in the first chapter when she rides past cornfields with signs warning of the apocalypse. But then, a truck full of redneck jocks pull up and change our expectations. The first twist to the standard narrative is that David and his older brother, Jerome, are two black children who were adopted by Julia's parents. Originally her parents wanted to adopt an orphaned white child who had befriended Julia's older sister during one of her stays in a hospital. But they inquired after he had been adopted. Instead the adoption agency presented two black children that were looking for families. Julia's parents took the situation as a test from God and adopted the children to show how Christian they could be. From the rest of the book this is possibly the most Christian thing they did for the boys, taking them in and providing shelter. Later in the book, Julia describes the punishments meted out their father. Julia and her other siblings are grounded for the week. Jerome and David get tied to a post and whipped. And this leads to the second twist for the reader. Julia is recounting America in the 70's and 80's. The book has already been compared to Bastard Out of Carolina and Oranges are not the Only Fruit for its themes. The biggest difference is that Allison and Winterson set their semi-autobiographical novels in the early 1960's. With Jesus Land we find an America that has not really changed post-Civil Rights era. White America still mistreats its black children and even Julia ends up denying her brothers when faced with the stares from fellow students. Here is a clear-eyed look at the hypocrisy of Christian America. Julia's parents are more worried about the babies in Africa who are dying as pagans than for the well-being of their own children. What's worse is that they rationalize their short-comings with Biblical passages. Instead of charging the memoir with hateful screeds against her mother and father, Julia Scheeres stays neutral on their actions and focuses on her own feelings and actions. The reader is left to synthesize their actions into a complete picture. Yes, Julia feels guilty when her brothers get whipped and connects it with the color of her skin, but she doesn't demonize her father nor does she give him the defense of the time period. The father is portrayed as a distant man who is quick to anger and more focused on his career than his family. Nearing the end of the book, Julia does admit she feels her mother never really loved her children and felt they were more of a burden than a blessing. She would much rather focus on the unbaptized in the Third World and the good work that missionaries are doing. The removed commitment of donating money to a good cause is a much easier path to God than dealing with your personal problems. And that's what this book is really about. One girl's survival of a family that did not want to take an active role in dealing with their problems. Jerome appears and disappears throughout the book. His punishment for leaving home is to be kicked out which leads to juvie and jail. When David and Julia become too much trouble, they are shipped off to Escuela Caribe, a Christian camp for troubled youths in the Dominican Republic. The second half of the book focuses on their time in the Dominican Republic where they are broken down and rebuilt in this boot camp for God. The children are ranked according to their submissiveness. The least submissive can not enter a room or sit without permission from the camp counselors. The goal of the camp is to break troubled teens down and build them up into good Christian children. What it ends up being is a crash course in how to survive under tyranny. The rules make no sense and have no real relationship to the values of Christian compassion. The chapters in Escula Caribe remind me of accounts from initiates to various orders of priests in the Catholic Church. By the time we reach redemption, we've followed Julia through a secular journey equivalent to the most arduous of the Catholic Saints (a comparison a die-hard Calvinist would never admit to). And like those saints, Julia seems to come to a fuller understanding. And not just an understanding about her relationship to God and the church, but a deeper understanding of her family. This is the most important story in the book- Julia's understanding of the other people in her life. The book has already been picked as a Book Sense pick for October 2005. Kirkus and Publishers Weekly have reviewed the book. Publishers Weekly also had an interview with the author that is worth reading if you can find it.