"This tree was strong once," Lonnie said, pointing to a mottled spot on the trunk. "Then it took the sickness. Not much you can do once that sets in except watch it die. And trees kin take a long time to die. Sometimes years. But they're dying all the while."
16-year-old Joel Emerson Haines is heir apparent to the Austin Life Community Church
- a virtual megachurch offering service to hundreds of in-person congregants and millions of online members. To his mother and the lay people, he's the perfect son. In his heart, he knows better.
Joel is going through the motions of faith, but is relentlessly pursued by an emptiness that he believes can only be filled with the Lord's love-a love that he doesn't
feel
.
The church's new gardener, Lonnie Lloyd Simpson, is oozing faith. Lonnie gyrates during sermons and wails at funerals in a garish display of just how much he feels the Lord. One day, Joel decides to ask Lonnie how he feels what he does, despite his mother's, warnings to stay away. Lonnie tells him it's by doing the Lord's work, and Joel believes him. Seeking guidance and a way to that evasive feeling of belonging, Joel asks Lonnie to be his mentor, and teach him to do the Lord's work-not yet knowing that the Lord's work might not be exactly what he thinks it is.
The church has seen a decline in in-person membership.
The church members keep dying.
As the body count rises, and Lonnie's spirit rises too,
Joel begins to wonder whether Lonnie's work and the Lord's work are the same things
. A confused and increasingly isolated Joel finds some comfort in the newfound affections of Delilah Reynolds, daughter of the church's other royal family and co-founders. Shored up by her support, Joel wants nothing more to do with Lonnie or his interpretation of what the Lord wants-until Delilah takes ill with a fatal disease. Thinking that his refusal to do the Lord's work is why Delilah was afflicted, Joel returns to Lonnie and dedicates himself to walking Lonnie's path. Desperate to save Delilah, and seeing himself as Job being tested, Joel finds himself mired in a world where light is dark, and life and death hang in the balance.
Can he save himself and the girl he loves?
Will he ever truly know the Lord's love? And finally, what will become of the congregation Joel is destined to inherit?