Outside A Dog

In Strangers in the Land of Egypt by Stephen March, Jesse Terrill could be pegged as the stereotypical ‘troubled teen’ — his older brother has been killed, his mother has abandoned his family, and his father has suffered brain damage as a result of being attacked in an alley — and in the opening of Strangers in the Land of Egypt, he’s feeling restless. That restlessness translates into trouble after he’s caught vandalizing his town’s Jewish temple. The judge assigned to his case lets him off relatively easy; instead of being sent to the state reformatory, Jesse is assigned as an aide to Mr. Ebban, a Holocaust survivor currently living in a nursing home. Mr. Ebban and his unwavering faith are alien to Jesse, who is rather (understandably) jaded. Through his duty to Mr. Ebban — which includes reading to the gentleman from both the Bible and the Torah — Jesse begins to understand the old man’s way of life, and that understanding impacts his own.

This book has a great cast of characters, and the interactions between them are enjoyable to read. I’ll admit that Varden Story, Jesse’s supervisor at the nursing home, is my favorite — he’s got some great dialogue. Mr. Ebban is wonderful in his own right; he has an impact on both Jesse and the reader. The only complaint I have about this novel is that it feels too short. The story’s threads all get tied up in the last twenty pages, and that just seems unreal — a little too neat to be believable– to me. Certainly worth reading, though.

Note: Strangers in the Land of Egypt will be published in May 2009 by The Permanent Press.