“Fallen”
by David Maine
Published: August 2005
ISBN: 0312328494

(Updated: January 28, 2006.)

From the Publisher…

Once Expelled From the Garden, Eve and Adam have to find their way past recriminations and bitterness to construct a new life together in a harsh land. But the challenges are many for the world’s first family. Among their children are Abel and Cain, and soon the adults must discover how to be parents to one son who is everything they could hope for and another who is sullen, difficult, and rife with insecurities and jealousies. In the background, always, is the incomprehensibility of God’s motives as He watches over their faltering attempts to build a life. In Fallen, David Maine has drawn a convincing, wryly observant, and enthralling portrait of a family-one driven (and riven) by passions, jealousies, irrationality, and love. The result is an intimate, in-depth story of brothers, a husband, and a wife-people whose struggles are both completely familiar and yet utterly original.

What a lovely book! And… my interest picked up as I read through the pages and the story wound itself backwards. I write that because as you open the front cover you find yourself at chapter 40. And, in the end at “the” beginning, you find yourself at chapter 1. And, yes, it starts as it ends — either direction — with “The Old Man”. Wonderful!

I actually spent a while after finishing the book trying to imagine having read it forwards. And even though many of us know the forward story — it’s how most of us first heard it — I actually couldn’t do it. Or I could but quickly realized that it is indeed a completely different experience “that way”. Which is, I guess, the point — oh so beautifully made.

Much, much, much pause for thought. Much. Things that I imagine many of us have struggled with, turned over and around, wondered about, related to. But not in this way. So… yes to oh so familiar and yes to utterly original. Highly recommended with a four out of five hearts on my “couldn’t-wait-to-get-back-to-it” scale. (It started as a three and turned into a five by the end. So, yes, I guess I do like this direction of the storytelling much better :o)