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Great Book! Oct 10, 2009
The seven stories in this book are exceptionally well written and I would recommend this book to anyone. Obviously, as parables, there are multiple meanings to these stories. On a secular level, I found the stories to be rich, vibrant and interesting. Most striking were the images that were painted through the author's words. This alone would make these stories worth reading.
It was on the spiritual level that I found the stories to be most compelling, especially for those who are looking for spiritual truths in this world. The author makes it clear that there are eternal verities that sadly, many in our society miss. These verities, these truths about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are the underlying strength of all these stories. They demand circumspection and, I believe, a need to be ready, for all those who love Him, to heed His call in the times ahead.
Publisher's Review Sep 30, 2009
This is a unique work written for thoughtful Christian readers hungry for good literature--for those who, tired of fiction littered with thin or anemic characters, predictable plots, and cliché endings, walk into bookstores searching for something by George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis. Mr. Gray has taken his time with these stories; his prose--intricate, poetic, and rich--engages the reader more than the prose styles to which today's Christian readers are accustomed. These parables are marked by an avoidance of compromise, and each requires a degree of thought and engagement from the reader not found in much of the pabulum that passes for much of modern Christian fiction. And like any good parable, each challenges some aspect of current trends in the religious culture of the day while at the same time asserting truth.
"Story Before a Patrol" is a short, fast-paced narrative related by a Jewish partisan who must come to grips with a dilemma--his people are being murdered en masse, yet he was taught that God is sovereign over all things. What does God want? What is God doing? And why the Jews?
"Macushla" is a parable about suffering. It seems that Gray's prose here is suffused with shades of Patrick O'Brian (it is told from an Irish narrator's perspective, with the same sweet appreciation for life and the glory of words). The story is a brief, sad, sweeping, epochal view of one woman's life as she endures what can only be described as the deepest wound, the hardest sacrifice, and the sweetest joy.
"Up on Millstone Ridge" is a gray and solemn story, tinged with ashes, which poses the stark but rapidly emerging question to Christians: "What will you do when faced with demands from a totalitarian state--demands which directly contradict or prohibit the exercise of your faith--and you must make a choice between obeying God or obeying man?"
"When Revelation Kissed Reason" is written in the genre of a fable; a famous doctor who treats autistic children in a clinic in the Adirondacks encounters a strange gardener with a unique perception of who God is and what He requires. In his contentions with this man, the doctor comes to learn by experience why God sent His Son, and why each of us must individually come to that Son to be truly healed. Gray takes this title, we suspect, from a line of text in one of Mark Helprin's stories in which Helprin laments the vast and unbridgeable gulf between Revelation and Reason. The story is a heart's cry from God to the Jew, in respect and love, calling them to recognize He Who is Truth and Beauty and Righteousness and Peace, and to demonstrate that Jesus is the only bridge between Revelation and Reason.
"Note to Horatio" is the story of a despairing man who flees to the wilderness to recover from the pain caused by disobedience, and in his solitude encounters someone whose life depicts a different perspective on religion. For those who despair of today's institutional church--its adherence to cultural tradition which actively negates the supremacy of Jesus in a person's life; its growing decline into the poisonous swamp of modern-day culture; and its pointless, at times blasphemous dalliance with New Age teaching--this story will particularly resonate.
"Return to Koidanyev" is a short, ironic fable which, in a politically-incorrect way challenges much of today's current Jewish community and their typical political inclinations. Gray takes Jewish readers to task for their habitual support of policies and politics which have throughout history embodied the very spirit of death to the Jewish people. And too in this biting parable Gray highlights the fact that all of us--Jews and non-Jews--are our own worst enemy as we seek anything other than simply obedient service to the true Messiah.
"Wagon of Fools", the title story of this collection, is perhaps the strangest parable of them all. A disgraced Red Army officer is relegated to driving supply wagons behind the lines in Russia during the German Invasion (Operation Barbarossa) in 1941 and 1942. What message Gray has for his readers in this story, perhaps more of a parable than any, we will leave for each reader to ascertain for themselves.
In these stories, the author's heart for the Jewish people comes through--perhaps, we respectfully submit, a reflection of God's own heart as He anguishes over their continual rejection of His son. There is pleading, there is humor, there is anger and frustration and the ominous, portentous prediction of a coming tragedy so horrific as to make the Holocaust as nothing by comparison. This is not a doctrine or a possibility at all bandied about in today's Christian circles--and yet it speaks stridently throughout all of Scripture. It is amazing what blinders culture can impose.
Gray's fictional assertion that Christians may face direct and crushing persecution in America is also not in accordance with most of modern American Christianity's inclinations. Such things are not welcomed by the majority of American Christians today--they don't want to consider that they may need to face the roaring, crushing, iron-clawed beast of a Government run amok, forcing them to choose between God or the State. Gray does us all a service here in challenging Christians to think about what they will do should such a thing occur--for when the time comes, it will be too late.
Autism is a unique thread through many of the stories, and Gray's assertion, made in "When Revelation Kissed Reason", as to one possible explanation for this malady will shock some, surprise many, and perhaps encourage others (remember that it is a fable).
Gray's obvious irritation with today's church may be offensive to some. Yet with today's growing movement of Christians who realize that in order to retain their faith and allegiance to Jesus they must leave their institutional church traditions and background, this may resonate.
These are unique and compelling stories, and like a good parable, each conveys a lesson. If you are looking for something light, something happy, or something that resembles the world's culture (but wrapped in a Christian wrapper)...well then...these stories might not be for you. However...if you are looking for substantial Christian fiction that will make you think, that will call you to a closer relationship with Jesus, that will challenge your perceptions, then we recommend this work.
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