Saint Jim

by Duke Droste

Jim is a homeless addict. His drug of choice is healing people. But a gift bestowed can have a mind of its own. For some, he may only see colors, but when the disease manifests itself as an entity, then he's compelled to action.

Each time his compulsion to heal overtakes him, it drives him further into a spotlight he wants to avoid. The Reverend Baxter, by mistake, believes he's healed a dying boy at the shelter, and it pulls Jim in deeper.

Jim's brilliant idea to be the reverend's assistant, will give him access to all the desperate people seeking miracles. Fame and power may consume everything.

221 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 6, 2017

About the author

Duke Droste was raised in Fort Worth, Texas and now resides in Dallas with his wife, two children, three cats, a dog, and a bird that doesn’t believe in the Oxford comma. He works as a software development manager for a telecommunications company.

His writing style leans toward the metaphysical where his main characters are driven with a sense of hope.

Reviews

[J.R. Sherrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim is homeless, but he's not about to gripe or complain about his lot in life. In fact, all he really wants is to help people. The one shining spot in his dreary existence is Sandra, a shelter volunteer who is always kind and seems to find him genuinely interesting. The only problem is, Jim has a bit of an attitude. And nowhere is his attitude more of a problem than when he encounters hypocrites like the reverend who preaches at the local shelter where Sandra works.

Life takes an unexpected turn when two angels give Jim the power and compulsion to heal people with his hands.Unlike others who have been chosen, he seems truly selfless in his need to heal, unlike the reverend who only wants to use him for his own gain and does everything within his power, including coercion and blackmail to turn Jim's gift into an unholy spectacle. Jim is forced to battle both the reverend and his inner demons to keep his gift from becoming sullied by greed. In the end, he must chose between love, life and his principles if he wants to survive.

Saint Jim is an oddly powerful narrative about the battle between good and evil within the human soul. It chronicles the very real battle between good and evil and man's place in the universe. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in a truly insightful book about faith.

[Virginia Boylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is great, the hero appealing, but the story-telling kept me at arm’s length. It felt as if I was observing instead of being pulled into Jim’s world. Reverend Baxter is too one-dimensional and Jim’s failure to see through Baxter’s hoax is unexplainable. Jim’s relationship with Sandra, while sweet, also seems distant. Ray is hilarious, my favorite secondary character. The strange visitors’ reason for what they did to Jim is never sufficiently explained, and Jim’s reason for remaining homeless, while tragic, is also insufficient. The overall story, though, gave me a good time.