The Last Day

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
The Last Day
Steerforth; 1 edition (September 1, 2009)
by
James Landis


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


James Landis lives in New Hampshire.


ABOUT THE BOOK

Warren Harlan Pease, the young narrator of this spellbinding novel, returns to his native New Hampshire from the Iraq War and spends an entire day with Jesus visiting and contemplating hi own life with fresh eyes, and a willing heart. He examines his relationships to those he loves─his girlfriend, his best friend, his father, his dead mother, his daughter ─ and grapples with the pain he has been carrying since the death of his mother when he was still a boy.

While in Iraq, armed with his sniper’s ‘s rifle and his deeply held faith, Specialist Pease traveled across ideological borders and earned an appreciation for his enemy’s culture and for what connect us all as human beings. He also learned how to kill and taught others to do the same. “War doesn’t test your faith in Jesus,” Warren comes to realize. “It tests your faith in yourself.” The Last Day answers some questions and asks many more. It’s a powerful meditation on religion and war, love and loss.

This work of compassion and healing grace will resonate with skeptics and believers, be shared and discussed between friends and among families. It is a book for our time, and forever.


If you would like to read an excerpt from Chapter one of , go HERE

The Last Day by James Landis is the truly rare gem of a life-changing book. It's difficult to write a book in which a contemporary character meets Jesus without writing cheesy sentimentality or preachy discourses on faith. Landis' stunningly beautiful novel avoids all of those traps. Warren "War" Pease, a twenty-year-old soldier serving in Iraq meets up with Jesus, who calls himself Ray, on a mysterious visit to his hometown in New Hampshire. War meets up with Bethie, the mother of his daughter, Dodie, who he loved desperately, but could never let her into his heart; his father, a veterinarian with a unusual view of religion and guns; and his best friend Ryan, who has stepped into Bethie and Dodie's lives to fill the void he left when he went to Iraq. War jumps around in narration between his experiences in Baghdad and encountering the ones he left behind. Landis is a lyrical storyteller who has labored over each and every sentence, constructing them carefully for maximum power and emotion. His descriptions of the paranoia and accompanying recklessness of young soldiers are brilliant. War is a thoughtful young man who takes his job as sniper very seriously, and readers will find themselves pulled into his life. Ray and War's repartee keeps the book from becoming gloomy or dark. Ray keeps the reader's and War's focus right where it needs to be: on Him. In the beginning of the book, I was mentally fighting the obvious ending, but by the end, Landis' writing makes War's end a thing of beauty and grace. I know it's early in the year, but I am certain that this will make my top ten list of 2010.

I started seeing a new doctor today for my RA, and with that came the usual change in medication. I have high hopes that this doctor genuinely wants me to feel better, and it helps that he's a co-worker!