Sacred Books & Sky Hooks
Fort Collins, Colorado: Komos Books, 2020. 269 pp. Octavo. [22 3/4 cm]. Illustrated wraps. Item #60956
ISBN: 9781952006210
Sacred Books & Sky Hooks is a genre-bending literary thriller with occasional dollops of humor. It resembles Melville's Moby Dick in one respect: each narrative is punctuated by nonfictional discussions of a central subject. Instead of whales and whaling, this novel deals with the subject of founder myths: sacred stories told by and about founders of religious movements. And instead of being a tale of a quest on the high seas, it is a thriller featuring kidnapping, murder, and escape.
Born into a family of Bostonian religious seekers, Washington lawyer, sleuth, and amateur comparative religionist Ethan Swift III puts three such myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of the contemporary start-up religion, Summum; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on a virtual stand and finds them all guilty of making questionable claims about their divine revelations. On publishing his findings, he becomes anathema to the religiously correct, engages his nemesis in a Western-style shootout, and finally finds peace at a Japanese Buddhist temple.
This novel plows a field near those tilled by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), Jon Krakauer (Under the Banner of Heaven), and Bart Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted). It should appeal to those who read the "New Atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens).
-from publisher.
Price: $15.00