The Biography of a Novel: Part 2

Last week, I began a series of postings on the biography of my historical novel, The Reluctant Spy. In Part 1 of that series, I described the genesis of the book. (In her comment last week, Joanne used that word, and I so like it! Thank you.)

Briefly, while I walked in the Stillwater cemetery back in 1997, two biblical characters began speaking through me. I realized they were responding to a question: “Who is he for you?” Knowing they were both from the faith document called the Gospel of Luke, I began to reread that Christian testament.

Now let’s began Part 2 of the series: the development of the first version of the novel.

Entitled Who Is He for You? the first version was a series of monologues spoken by the characters who peopled the four gospels of the Christian Testament. I spent several weeks—one hour each morning because I was still working full time—reading the gospels and thinking about how each character I met in them might respond to the question, “Who is Jesus for you?”

After rereading, I made a list of twenty-seven characters who might have a response to the question: Who is he for you? For each, I wrote a monologue. After completing these testaments of faith or disbelief, I asked several friends to read the manuscript. I wasn’t sure what I had—what I would call the monologues. They clearly weren’t a novel. But what were they?

Friends described them as “spiritual reflections” or a “devotional” book. One reader called it my “love letter to Jesus.”

I had no desire to write spiritual reflections or daily devotions. Why? Because at that time, I was going through my third crisis of faith. I’d gone through one when I was seventeen and another when I walked away from Catholicism in the 1970s. In 1997, I was struggling with whether I could believe in a Supreme Being. The struggle was a virulent one.

Often during my daily walks in the cemetery, I found myself arguing with the God in whom I’d believed for some sixty-two years. In the silence amidst the gravestones, I’d shout my frustration. My fear. My disdain. My sorrow. My loneliness. My disbelief.

 

For me, those days were like the struggle of Jacob with the angels in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. After their struggle, Jacob was left with a limp and a blessing.

For me, perhaps, the limp has been my inability to believe in my writing. The blessing, perhaps, is the novel that will soon be published. There is no doubt that in working on it, off and on for twenty-two years, I’ve developed a spirituality that enriches my life.

Now back to 1999: In two years, I had produced hundreds of words spoken by characters in the Christian Bible. I didn’t feel or think that I was a Christian any longer. I still deeply believed that a man names Jesus had lived and roamed the hills and valleys of Palestine back in the first century of the Common Era. 

I still knew that he was my dearest friend. That he had influenced my life as no other person, not even my mother, had. That his words about justice and compassion, inclusion and forgiveness had become a philosophy that guided my life.

But how could I write about him when my belief in his divinity was also being affected by my crisis of faith?

What was I to do with those twenty-seven interviews? And that, my friends, is what I’ll write about next week in Part 3 of this series.

Peace.

Painting by Delacroix from Wikipedia.