The Joshua Tree

by L. Steven Rencher

(2005 1st edition contains language that some may find objectionable) What on earth is wrong with Sarah? What awful thing could have happened to make this once sweet and innocent teenager, change into a detached and insufferable person seemingly overnight? These are the questions that haunt Joshua, a shy and lonely 16 year-old boy who, after hearing her name spoken in a dream one night, meets and falls in love with her. Their tumultuous journey and the mystery behind it is the basis for The Joshua Tree. JOSHUA PEELER, a shy, lonely 16 year old youth growing up in the Bronx, possesses a healthy respect for fate and its inevitability, but he never thinks much about it relative to his own life. Little does he know that fate is about to reveal itself to him, and in a way that would forever change the direction of his life. The setting is the Bronx, New York; the year, 1972. Joshua's asleep in his bed when he hears the name of a girl, Sarah, in a dream. Months later, through a fateful set of occurrences, he meets a beautiful girl whose name, surprisingly, is Sarah. SARAH is 16 years old and lives with her father, Frank Edwards, a domineering brute of a man whose wife walked out on him years earlier. Her leaving, and his being forced to raise their daughter alone in a Bronx project, fuels his bitterness. As a consequence, he takes much of his frustrations out on Sarah. Frank's bizarre behavior coupled with the oppressive circumstances of life at home, are a constant source of embarrassment for Sarah. A straight-A student, she's ostracized by most of her peers who she views as pathetic ghetto lifers. A self-described agnostic as well, she's methodically mapped out a future that doesn't include any of those things which she has come to loathe. Her steadfast arrogance on the matter, can't imagine anything derailing her life's goal. The one thing she hadn't counted on was love, and it blossoms quickly between her and Joshua as they each discover a commonality in each other's parochial existence. They're soon rendezvousing in secret, and aga! inst the wishes of her father. Sarah's happier than she's ever been. Then something horrific happens and in an instant, her life is turned upside down. The Joshua Tree, a novel written by first-time author, L. Steven Rencher, examines the tenuous threads of a young woman on the brink, the lengths that a committed husband and father will go to save his family, and the restorative power of love and faith when all else fails. The story begins in the south Bronx, New York in the year 1972 and spans the next several years in the lives of Joshua and Sarah, taking the reader along on a journey of discovery, heartbreak and revelation. The Joshua Tree is a sweeping urban love story with strong characters, and honest portrayals that are sure to please fans of both romance and drama alike.

512 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book... The author is freaking brutal to his characters. In the first dozen pages the protagonist's best friend is murdered in front of him. Within 80 pages the other protagonist is raped and pregnant. I was thinking "There's 400+ more pages, where can it possibly go from here?" Oh it keeps going alright, there are still crackheads, lesbians with 9 year old thug sons, absent fathers, ex-lesbian ex-catholic who prayed to statues (we TOTALLY do that), drug kingpins, drivebys, and of course Jesus. It seems like none of the family can catch a break the first 300+ pages, even when something nice happens there's always an uncalled for argument or accusation by one of the characters, or a bitter forboding feeling forshadowing future pains.

The whole *simplified* message of the book seemed to me to be "People's lives are crappy until they find Jesus, then everything is hunky-dory. You get a good job and move to the suburbs." This is otherwise known as "the Prosperity Gospel" and not is one of my favorite theological concepts because it equates favor with God to "making it" in "the World" or in this case, the American middle class ideal. This suggests that the inverse is true, the people who are poor, oppressed, and living in the ghetto are somehow specifically cursed by God. From my understanding of the gospels, this is exactly the kind of thinking Jesus wanted to do away with.

But this review has been largely critical thusfar, and I don't want to end on that note. I enjoyed the book, even when I struggled to keep going at times. Rencher is a good story teller, and does a good job creating a multigenerational story. The characters weren't one dimensional, and *thankfully* there is redemption at the end of the story. I think 4 stars is a fair rating.