The Rapture of Canaan - Hardcover

Reynolds, Sheri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039914112X ISBN 13: 9780399141126

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996

Synopsis

Ninah Huff, a member of an isolated religious community, only sees the outside world at school, where she is labeled as odd, and when it is discovered that she is pregnant, Ninah maintains her belief that she carries a holy child. By the author of Bitteroot Landing.

About this title

Review:

Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 1997: Members of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind spend their days and nights serving the Lord and waiting for the Rapture--that moment just before the Second Coming of Christ when the saved will be lifted bodily to heaven and the damned will be left behind to face the thousand years of tribulation on earth. The tribulation, according to Grandpa Herman, founder of Fire and Brimstone, will be an ugly time: "He said that we'd run out of food. That big bugs would chase us around and sting us with their tails . . . He said we'd turn on the faucet in the bathroom and find only blood running out . . . He said evil multitudes would come unto us and cut off our limbs, and that we wouldn't die . . . And then he'd say, 'But you don't have to be left behind. You can go straight to Heaven with all of God's special children if you'll only open your hearts to Jesus . . .'"

Such talk of damnation weighs heavy on the mind of Ninah Huff, the 15-year-old narrator of Sheri Reynolds's second novel, The Rapture of Canaan. To distract her from sinful thoughts about her prayer partner James, Ninah puts pecan shells in her shoes and nettles in her bed. But concentrating on the Passion of Jesus cannot, in the end, deter Ninah and James from their passion for each other, and the consequences prove both tragic and transforming for the entire community.

The Rapture of Canaan is a book about miracles, and in writing it, Reynolds has performed something of a miracle herself. Although the church's beliefs and practices may seem extreme (sleeping in an open grave, mortifying the flesh with barbed wire), its members are complex and profoundly sympathetic as they wrestle with the contradictions of Fire and Brimstone's theology, the temptations of the outside world, and the frailties of the human heart.

About the Author:

Sheri Reynolds lives in Richmond and teaches part-time at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has also taught at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 039914112X
• ISBN 13: 9780399141126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 317