Since I’ve been looking back on fiction’s personal influences, I’d do well to consider novels involving religion. My thriller, Remarkable Silence, is a “what if” story concerning an archaeological discovery that upends the core histories of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
What led me to write it? I’ll have to acknowledge several novels and their influence. The first is Jan de Hartog’s 1972 historical work, The Peaceable Kingdom, a somewhat fictionalized account of the beginnings of the religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. The novel has nobility to it, even as its characters remained flawed human beings. Their spirituality, shown as the Quaker belief that we accomplish much when we “go for that of God” in any fellow human being, and truly live by good works, appealed to me as an idealistic young adult. I did, for a time, attend Friends meetings.
However, to stay with me, a novel also has to provide a line or two that I’ll remember and use at times that call for wisdom to help myself and/or others. In de Hartog’s book, a young woman is raped on shipboard sailing to America. She is isolated in her despair until an older woman who appears in control of her own productive life, embraces the girl and whispers, “It happened to me, too.” How often since reading that scene, have I realized its basic truth – that comfort can be given in so many situations – divorce, setbacks, grief – by opening the door to communication simply by saying, “It happened to me, too.” Inspiring and practical, de Hartog’s, The Peaceable Kingdom, started me on a long spiritual odyssey.
What novel has inspired and informed your spiritual life?