Sacred Books & Sky Hooks
is a genre-bending literary thriller with occasional dollops of humor. It resembles Melville's
Moby Dick
in one respect: each narrative is punctuated by nonfictional discussions of a central subject. Instead of whales and whaling, this novel deals with the subject of founder myths: sacred stories told by and about founders of religious movements. And instead of being a tale of a quest on the high seas, it is a thriller featuring kidnapping, murder, and escape.
Born into a family of Bostonian religious seekers, Washington lawyer, sleuth, and amateur comparative religionist Ethan Swift III puts three such myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of the contemporary start-up religion, Summum; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on a virtual stand and finds them all guilty of making questionable claims about their divine revelations. On publishing his findings, he becomes anathema to the religiously correct, engages his nemesis in a Western-style shootout, and finally finds peace at a Japanese Buddhist temple.
This novel plows a field near those tilled by Dan Brown
(The Da Vinci Code)
, Jon Krakauer
(Under the Banner of Heaven)
, and Bart Ehrman
(Jesus, Interrupted)
. It should appeal to those who read the "New Atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens).