Demigod

by Jeff Putnam

In Dallas Texas, in the mid-eighties, sixteen-year-old Matthew Scofield becomes the follower of a woman twice his age, Elaine Axton, who styles herself a “prophet” —the human manifestation of God’s will. She is beautiful, talented and the mother of a nine-year-old child who has become a ward of the state because of her inability to provide for him. By means of his skill trimming trees Matthew is able to feed Elaine and ease some of her burdens, though in so doing he repeatedly breaks the law. Elaine seems not to care as long as the money keeps coming. Taking it she always thanks God instead of Matthew. In his turn Matthew is certain that God is helping him find work and guaranteeing the large sums he is being paid to do it. Meanwhile, Matthew’s parents, after years of being unable to intervene with a strategy of their own, are seeking help from clergy, psychiatrists, and finally from the famous Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade to undermine Matthew’s destructive relationship, only to find that Elaine is being manipulated in her turn by a powerful evangelical who has long been taking advantage of troubled children. "I like this novel. It's relentlessly true to life and about life, painfully wise in its way, and its special frisson, the almost inescapable Puritanism in the American character, finally emerges in a quiet space. (Matthew's father's) 'something eternal in everyone' is in fact the original Gnostic Christianity where all is One, even though such sweetness and light doesn't have much chance when everyone is trying to fit into hell... There's an American allegory in the story of Matthew. Like the first Puritans he puts his faith in the singular individual's relationship to God, and at the same time he's like a colonial, obedient to the unseparated church and state, and giving it his earnings. Then, gradually, he is drawn to see some sacredness in Nature--an Emerson phase?--even though he makes his money by exploiting natural resources. Finally he is exactly like the Americans since the 1960s, narcissistic and materialistic... Elaine is only one aspect of Matthew's world, imperious to be sure, and representative of our national 'exceptionalism,' still, herself, a mere tool of murderous confidence-men." -Alexander Blackburn, prof. emeritus of the Univ. of Colorado, founder of The Writer's Forum and author of many works of of fiction and criticism (including a study of Frank Waters).

342 pages, Paperback

Published June 16, 2020