Church Library Online: Popular Christian Fiction Selections

The Church Library Online

Surveys Popular Christian Fiction

 

Evelyn E. Smith

M.S. in Library Science, University of North Texas (2012)

Ph. D. in English 
(Contemporary & 19th-century Fiction & Rhetoric),
Texas Christian University (1995)

While some readers might find the thought of settling back with a Christian novel off-putting, that doesn't necessarily mean that they must brace themselves for a didactic, simplistic, or smugly moralizing narrative. Moreover, although apocalyptic novels like Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins Left Behind series are what many readers think of when they hear the words “Christian fiction”, authors of Christian fiction include not only evangelical writers, but also mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish novelists. 

 Browsers looking for religious fiction also won't find this category of books shelved separately at their local public library like Western fiction and Science Fiction are, for like the romance, mystery, or adventure novel, Christian fiction falls under the general categories of either Adult Fiction or Young Adult Fiction. Even here, the lines of various sub-genres blur since individual Christian novels might also be classed as examples of historical fiction, science fiction, western, or romance. That means that Christian novels are almost as varied as all fiction is.  Accordingly, this sampling of popular Christian fiction reviewed below shows how diverse Christian fiction can be.  For a more detailed view of Christian fiction turn to the 6th edition of Diana Tixier Herald's Genreflecting: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests (2006).

Adult Christian Fiction

Caldwell, Taylor. (1958). Dear and Glorious Physician. Reprint 2008. San Francisco: Ignatus Press. Available in English, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish language additions.  No e-book available.
Literary Genre:  Christian fiction and historical fiction.



Guido Reni's St. Luke (1621)

Taylor Caldwell builds her epic novel on St. Luke around only a few known facts: 1) Based on a reading of Colossians 10:14, Luke was most probably a Gentile and a Greek; 2) textual evidence indicates the physician wasn't an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus; 3) Eusebius (260/265--339/340 CE), an early Christian historian, has noted that Luke was born in Antioch in Syria. Thus, Caldwell must fill in the blanks, turning Luke into the freeborn, adopted son of a Roman general and a graduate of the medical school at Alexandria. Along the way, the fictional Luke meets up with many historical figures that prepare him for accepting Jesus as the savior of both Jews and Greeks.

Dear and Glorious Physician. (2014). Amazon.com. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Glorious-Physician-Novel-about/dp/1586172301

 Amazon reviewers give Dear and Glorious Physician a 4.7 out of 5, calling it sweeping, a masterpiece, and a great period narrative.

Dear and Glorious Physician. (2014). Bookrags.com. Retrieved from

http://www.bookrags.com/shortguide-dear-glorious-physician/

The Bookrags review links Caldwell's interest in medicine and the occult since Lucanius at first doesn't realize that his healing powers come God.

Dear and Glorious Physician. (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59097.Dear_and_Glorious_Physician

Goodreads reviews give Caldwell's fictionalized biography of St. Luke a 4.25 rating out of 5, even though this historical novel is more fiction than fact, and many of its passages qualify as “purple prose”.

Dear and Glorious Physician. (2012). Google Books. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books/about/Dear_and_Glorious_Physician.html?id=4S47PtmjTZwC

Google readers praise Dear and Glorious Physician's character development, research, and imagery, but alas some also find this panoramic novel particularly “verbose”.

Diamant, Anita. (1997). The Red Tent: A Novel. New York: St. Martin's Press. English, Hebrew, and Slovenian language editions available.  Literary genre:  Christian and Jewish fiction, historical fiction, and Chick Lit.


Anita Diamant's creative retelling of the 34th chapter of Genesis, depending upon the reader's point-of-view, is either the romance of Dinah and Shalem or the rape of Dinah. This literary epic reveals the untold story of the Bible's matriarchs, whose lives center around childbearing and fertility cults.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Rachel and Leah (1855)

Genesis 34. Dinah and the Shechemites. (n. d.). Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+34&version=NIV

Notes for reading The Red Tent by Anita Diament. (n. d.). Allen & Unwin. Retrieved from http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/BookPdf/ReadingGroupGuide/9781864486797.pdf

pp. 1-10.

Allen & Unwin's reading guide provides book reviews as well as questions for book club discussions.

The Red Tent. (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4989.The_Red_Tent#other_reviews

Told in the marginalized voice of the only daughter of Jacob mentioned in Genesis, this midrash, or rabbinic exegesis, reveals that sisterhood is powerful if not historically accurate.

The Red Tent. (2014). Spark Notes. Retrieved from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/redtent/

Spark Notes ushers Diament's The Red Tent into the literary canon by providing the reader with the novel's context, plot summary, and character list as well as an analysis of its major characters, themes, motifs and symbols, and analysis.

Rothman, Avram. (2014). The Red Tent: If You Knew Dina Like I Knew Dina. Aish.com. Retrieved from http://www.aish.com/ci/a/48931452.html

Rabbi Avram Rothman severely criticizes The Red Tent for its lack of historical accuracy as well as for its imposition of post-modern values on the wives and daughter of Jacob, who unlike Virginia Woolf, have a tent rather than a room of their own as well as their own pantheon of gods. 

Stuart, Mary B. (2003). The Red Tent. Curled Up. Retrieved from http://www.curledup.com/redtent.htm

The Red Tent “details” the “imagined lives” of Leah and Rachel as well as Dinah, Leah and Jacob's daughter, in the red tent where they are segregated during their menses and after childbirth. Although the major female characters are midwives, Stuart argues that Diament gives too much attention to the graphic detail surrounding the birth process. Even so, she views the story of Shalem and Dinah as a “compelling Romeo and Juliet story”.

Turnanov, Vladimir. (2007, December). Dinah's Rage: The retelling of Genesis 34 in Anita Diament's The Red Tent and Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. 34(4): 375-388. Retrieved from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/crcl/index

Diament undermines the main premise of Genesis 34 as her novel turns the rape of Dinah into mutually consensual behavior, thus transforming Dinah's brothers and father into savage brutes rather than defenders of the family's honor, and her lover, Shalem, into a more sensitive lover than any Iron Age prince would most probably be.

------. (2007, June). Yahweh vs. the Teraphim: Jacob's pagan wives in Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers and in Anita Diamant's The Red Tent. Nebula: A Jounrnal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship. 4(2): 139-151. Retrieved from

http://www.nobleworld.biz/images/Tumanov.pdf

In Diamant's retelling of the story of Jacob and his wives, monotheism is not so firmly planted as the book of Genesis makes it seem to be since all of Jacob's wives were born in Mesopotamia, Rachel steals her father's household gods when Jacob returns to his father, Issac (Genesis 31:19), and Jacob  orders the destruction of these idols (Genesis 35:2) (Turnanov, 2007 June, pp. 139-140). Indeed, the wives of Jacob seem barely aware of Jacob's devotion to El as ritually unclean women lead a separate existence in the red tent (Turnanov, 2007, June, p. 141). In this feminist re-imaging of Genesis, Jacob's god is “hard, strange, alien, and cold” in comparison to Mesopotamia's fertility goddesses (Turnanov, 2007, June, p. 144).

Peretti, Frank E. (1986). This Present Darkness. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books. English and Spanish language editions available.  No e-book available.  Literary genre:  Christian fiction, suspense, and fantasy.

As evangelical Christians simultaneously confront the sexual revolution and New Age mysticism, Peretti's This Present Danger promotes the value of engaging in spiritual warfare as a member of a Christian family, congregation, and community.

Dager, Albert James. (1992). This Present Darkness: Spiritual warfare—fact or fantasy. Media Spotlight. Retrieved from http://www.mediaspotlight.org/pdfs/ThisPresentDarkness.pdf

The “suspense tempered with humor” found in This Present Danger has given this fantasy novel cult status (Dager, 1992, para. 2-3). Dager nevertheless warns that if readers see this allegory as an accurate depiction of spiritual warfare, real harm might result (Dager, 1992, para. 5). Although Ephesians 6:10-12 groups satanic forces into principalities and powers, the New Testament gives no evidence that they fight among themselves (Dager, 1992, para 9). Furthermore, prayer is only a powerful weapon of spiritual warfare if it's coupled with the study of scripture (Dager, 1992, para. 15-16).

Gribben, Ireland Crawford. (2009). Prophecy fiction and evangelical political re-engagement. Writing the Rapture: Prophecy Fiction in Evangelical America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 107-119. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=feMOPumxz-IC&dq=This+Present+Danger+AND+Peretti&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s

This Present Darkness has earned an Assembly of God pastor turned carpenter the sobriquet as the “Stephen King of evangelical culture” and made it one of the top-selling Christian novels. Interestingly enough, Peretti also manages to combine apocalyptic and confrontational themes without once mentioning the rapture.

Howard, Jay R. (2004, March 5). Vilifying the enemy: The Christian right and the novels of Frank Peretti. The Journal of Popular Culture, 28(3): 193-206. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1994.2803_193.x/abstract

In This Present Darkness (1986) and its sequel, Piercing the Darkness (1988), Peretti intermingles a world inhabited by avenging angels and demons with present-day reality, thus providing believers either prayer cover or else tempting them (Howard, 2004, March 5, p. 193).

This Present Darkness. (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17309.This_Present_Darkness

Peretti merges horror with a treatise on prayer as an evangelical pastor and a newspaper editor get caught up in a New Age plot to bring the New World Order to a small, college town. Factions within the town are backed by the heavenly hosts or else by demons as Peretti vilifies Eastern mysticism, the occult, psychology, and humanism. Readers who enjoy C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and Stephen King's suspense novels will find it an enjoyable, fast-paced read. Accordingly, Goodreads reviewers gave it a 4.21 rating.

Wingate, Lisa. (2013). The Prayer Box. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Published only in English.  Large Print and e-book editions available. Literary genre:  Christian fiction and Chick Lit.

An elderly woman's wisdom serves as a guidepost for a younger woman as a lifetime of prayer, written out and placed in 81 prayer boxes, reveals a life of thoughtful self-sacrifice in the face of adversity and discrimination.

  
Book review: The Prayer Box. (2013, July 23). By the Book. Word Press. Retrieved from http://rbclibrary.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/book-review-the-prayer-box/

While reading the reclusive and recently departed Iola Anne Poole's letters to her Heavenly Father, Tandi Jo Reese undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis, changing from a much-abused and looked-down upon woman to a self-actualizing and capable mother.

The Prayer Box: Book Review. (2014, September 25). Memaws Stuff. Retrieved from http://memawsstuff.org/2014/09/25/the-prayer-box-book-review/

The Prayer Box is a study of failed relationships, the therapeutic effects of journaling, acceptance, and healing.

The Prayer Box (Carolina #1). (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17714301-the-prayer-box

A 2014 Christy Award nominee for Contemporary Christian Fiction, The Prayer Box couples the story of a a divorced mother of two fleeing an abusive husband with the tale of Iola Anne Poole, a 91-year-old woman who dies alone and seemingly friendless in a rambling Cape Hatteras mansion. A lifetime of prayer boxes stored in the house thus becomes “a blessing and a source of healing” for each woman as well as the community.

Young Adult Fiction

Duncan, S. L. (2014).  The Revelation of Gabriel Adam. Aurora, Illinois: Medallion Press. Published only in English; e-book edition available.  Literary genre:  Christian fiction, Young Adult fiction, suspense, and fantasy.

S. L. Duncan takes his audience on a roller-caster ride of a read that attempts to combine the intensity of Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth's recent dystopian novels with an emphasis on Gnostic or hidden knowledge made popular by Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instrument series, although it's obvious that Duncan is marketing this coming-of-age novel to Christian readers.

Houston, Meradeth. (2014, August). After Reading: The Revelation of Gabriel Adam. Meradeth Houston. Write Stuff. Blogspot. Retrieved from http://meradethhouston.blogspot.com/2014/08/after-reading-revelation-of-gabriel.html#.VCbEq7ktBhg

Houston finds this Duncan's debut novel “an interesting and engaging read”, for she is particularly intrigued by its settings. Nevertheless, she finds that the plot is “a little unfocused in places”.

McGinnis, Mindy. (2014, August 1). Book Talk: The Revelation of Gabriel Adam by S. L. Duncan. Writer, Writer Pants on Fire. Retrieved from http://writerwriterpantsonfire.blogspot.com/2014/08/book-talk-revelation-of-gabriel-adam-by.html

While Gabriel Adam has his own plans—attending NYU and settling down to an otherwise uneventful college life—he must flee to England to avoid a stalking assassin whereupon the last living member of the Essenes explains that Gabe is one of the four archangels, born human, who is charged with protecting humanity.

The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (Revelation Saga #1). (2014, June 23). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18397323-the-revelation-of-gabriel-adam

High school senior Gabriel Adams is looking forward to attending New York University until he discovers that he his destiny is to stop Armageddon.  Goodreads reviewers give this fast-paced adventure novel a 4.36 rating.

The Revelation of Gabriel Adam. (2014). Library Thing. Retrieved from http://www.librarything.com/work/14977330/reviews/

Although some of the reviewers liked the well-developed characters and descriptive settings, others panned the bildungsroman, noting that “it makes Raiders of the Lost Ark seem like a serious work of theology” and find the plot “simplistic” and “predictable”. Thus, reviewers only award it a 2.7 rating.

The Revelation of Gabriel Adam. (2014). LitPick. Retrieved from http://www.litpick.com/books/revelation-gabriel-adam

Gabriel Adam and his adopted dad, an Episcopalian minister, have moved around a lot, but he shares the normal high school student's aspirations until events reveal that he is one of the four archangels meant to save the world.

S. L. Duncan: The Revelation of Gabriel Adam. (2013, February 20). One Four Kid Lit. Word Press. Retrieved from http://onefourkidlit.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/s-l-duncan-the-revelation-of-gabriel-adam/

Recent law-school graduate S. L. Duncan reveals that he pitched his  novel as Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Harry Potter. The Alabama native likes to travel to exotic locations and play soccer.

Kingsbury, Karen. (2013). The Chance. New York: Howard Books.
Published only in English; available in Large Print edition, but no e-book edition is available. Literary genre:  Christian Fiction, Young Adult fiction, and Chick Lit.

When Ellie Tucker's dad, a Marine drill sergeant, throws her mother out of the house after he discovers her affair and subsequent pregnancy, the fifteen-year-old's life spirals out of control since she feels that both her mom and dad don't love her. 

After Ellie's dad announces that they are moving from Savannah, Georgia, to San Diego, California, her one chance at happiness remains the pledge that she and her high school sweetheart have made to each other to meet again to unearth a time capsule filled with their letters eleven years in the future. While Ellie has become an unwed mother, her childhood sweetheart is now a professional basketball player whose fame and skill rests upon his faith and character. Spoiler alert: Both Ellie's mom and dad and Ellie and her squeaky-clean, long-lost love eventually live happily-ever-after in this  Cinderella tale.

The Chance. (2014). Christian Book. Retrieved from http://christianbook.com/the-chance-karen-kingsbury/9781451647037/pd/647037

Editorial reviews peg The Chance as “another weeper from Christian-fiction diva Kingsbury”. They also note that readers who like Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook and Richard Paul Evan's The Walk will also enjoy this “gentle Christian romance”.

The Chance. (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15802385-the-chance

Goodreads readers give Kingsbury's The Chance a 4.14 rating, although the plot of this contemporary Christian romance rests on an improbable premise: An unwed mother reconnects with a high school boyfriend, who has become the Tim Tybow of professional basketball.

Parsons, Golden Keyes.  (2008).  In the Shadow of the Sun King.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson. English and Slovenian language editions available; e-book edition also available. Literary genre: Christian fiction, historical fiction, Young Adult Lit, and Chick Lit.

Golden Parsons' historical tale furnishes readers with a fictional overview of Louis XIV's extermination and banishment of the Huguenots after he abolishes the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Those readers interested in the Protestant Reformation will appreciate the author's attention to historical detail: Like the fictional Clavell clan, many Huguenots came from the nobility or the educated, merchant class. French troops were billeted in the homes of Protestants whereupon they seized or destroyed personal property.

Representatives of the Crown forcibly took Protestant children away from their parents, closed Protestant schools and colleges, forbid Protestant church services, gave Protestants the choice of either converting to Roman Catholicism or dying a martyr's death, and prohibited Protestant immigration to other countries, so many Huguenots fled France in secret.

See: 

Huguenot. (2013). Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275000/Huguenot

Huguenot history. (n. d.). The Huguenot Society of America. Retrieved from

http://www.huguenotsocietyofamerica.org/?page=Huguenot-History

Carrie. (2009). In the Shadow of the Sun King. 5 Minutes for Books. Retrieved from http://books.5minutesformom.com/967/in-the-shadow-of-the-sun-king/

Carrie notes that if the reader doesn't mind historical fiction “resting on the romantic side of things”, he or she will probably love Parsons' first novel.

In the Shadow of the Sun King. (2014). Darkness to Light Series. Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4484156-in-the-shadow-of-the-sun-king

Readers give this debut novel a four out of five rating, applauding its historical accuracy, but they also note that the characters come across as one-dimensional. Nevertheless, the plot has a believable premise: In 17th-century France, under a monarch who believed in the Divine Right of Kings, Separation of Church and State didn't exist. After Louis XIV's troops pillage the Protestant Clavell family's estate and kidnap their young daughter, Madeleine Clavell petitions Louis XIV for help since she and the king were once childhood friends. This meeting has disastrous results, so the rest of the novel is spent reuniting the family.

In the Shadow of the Sun King. (2014). Historical Novel Society. Retrieved from http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/in-the-shadow-of-the-sun-king/

Parsons' simple prose makes In the Shadow of the Sun King read like a Young Adult novel since she usually tells what is happening rather than actually showing the action. However, the Clavell family's resolute faith makes this depiction of the persecution of French Protestants an inspirational tale.

Pawdrey, Audrey. (2008, December). In the Shadow of the Sun King. Audrey Pawdrey Reads. Retrieved from http://audreypawdreyreads.blogspot.com/2008/12/in-shadow-of-sun-king.html

Pawdrey enjoys this “quick-paced” novel that is “rich in historical detail”.
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P. S.--By the way, readers can discover if nearby library catalogs have these and other works of Christian fiction by going to WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/