Violent holy men
are the cockroaches hiding under the church's collective rug. No one
wants to think about them, or talk about them, but every once in a
while they scuttle out, usually without warning. The response of the
church has been to shoo them back under
the rug and hope no one notices.
We are horrified and disgusted but no one wants to squash it-- think
of the mess. The abuse of vulnerable women by powerful men
isn't unique to Christianity, but it's uglier in Christianity,
because we're called to so much more. It's the pain of this
contradiction-- that something so profoundly soul-killing can happen
in a faith that is meant to be soul-liberating-- that makes us want
to look away.
Fortunately,
authors like Cindy Sproles aren't afraid to take the long look. Her
novel, Mercy's Rain, is by turns riveting, disturbing, and hopeful as
Mercy Roller, a bitter survivor of horrific abuse from her
preacher-father, comes to open herself to love and redemption. She's
dogged not only by the things her father did to her but by the things
she herself has done in anger. What she thinks will be a temporary
refuge with a family of believers becomes much, much more.....a
chance at a new life, at healing, and at love.
Mercy's Rain
is a compelling book that I ended up reading all in one sitting. The
plot, like the river at the center of the story, moves swiftly and
rarely falters. The sharp contrast between the darkness of
Mercy's birth-family and the love of the family who comes to care for
her is well-drawn and effective. The tone is understandably heavy,
but there are flashes of joy and even humor that will be a wonderful
surprise to the reader. The characters-- including Mercy herself--
are well drawn and believable. Sproles
takes great pains to bring human moments even to her villains. The
Pastor may be a sadistic monster but there are moments in which he
knows it, and even
moments in which he struggles to become something else. He is by no
means a sympathetic character, but we are not allowed to dismiss him
as a mere caricature of evil. He is worse than that. He is the
unrestrained and unbridled reflection of the depravity Scripture
tells us exists within each of us, and that is more terrifying than
any of his brutality.
The
complex, bittersweet relationship between Mercy and her mother is a
focus of much of the novel, allowing Mercy a way to work out the slow
changes that are taking place in her heart. Her persistent work to
replace hatred with love-- despite the frustration and failures she
finds along the way--- is beautiful to behold. The romantic
relationship between her and the “good” pastor, Samuel, is well
done.
For
the most part, Mercy's Rain
succeeds at immersing us in its mountain-side struggle between good
and evil. The reader does wonder, at times, why the Pastor's sadism
did not sooner meet vengeance, but it is certainly plausible that a
rural pastor could hold that level of sway over his congregation,
even with the threat of hell-fire at his disposal. And the sort of
evil that the Pastor wielded-- that shameful, secret, soul-destroying
evil-- was not the kind people were willing to talk about, even to
destroy it. The only real faltering, in this reader's opinion, comes
at the end of the novel.
So,
spoiler alert. Skip this next paragraph if you don't like to hear
about plot points in advance.
At
least one of the characters-- Maddie-- seems superfluous to the plot
at that point of the story, existing only to give Mercy one more
tragedy to mourn. Of all the deaths in the story-- and there are
many-- I regretted Maddie's the most because it seemed like such a
waste of her character. Maddie's injury and untimely end doesn't add
anything to Mercy's journey but the reader's empathy is depleted at a
crucial point.
The
other distraction was that I felt the book would have been better had
the two chapters been deleted. In my opinion, the book reached its
true conclusion when Mercy decided there was room in her heart to
love the baby she'd been given and the man who'd been waiting for
her. At that moment in the story, her past was put to rest and her
future was ready to begin. It's the book's natural ending. But we're
given two more chapters, in which Mercy decides God is moving her
away from her new family and her potential husband, only to change
her mind in the last paragraph. Perhaps the author felt she needed
some final crisis, but as there was not enough time left in the story
for proper pacing, both the crisis and its resolution felt hurried.
But even with that mis-step, the final moment when Mercy at last sees
herself as worth loving, is a triumph that the reader cannot help but
cheer.
Spoilers
over.
Cindy Sproles has
told a first-rate tale with Mercy's Rain. Even though its
mountain setting may seem remote in time and space from our modern
church culture, the theme is more than relevant. One doesn't need to
look far to hear stories of women and men who have suffered under
modern-day incarnations of The Pastor, and who've suffered again
under the church's refusal to acknowledge the wrong done to them.
Novels like this are one way to encourage them to speak out, to give
them the sense that they are not alone. Like a hike through the
author's beloved Appalachian mountains, this reader's journey through
this book is at times arduous but the view at the end is beautiful.
Amazon
Family Christian
Or find out more about Cindy and her other books at her website
No comments:
Post a Comment