The Book: The Preservationist, by David Maine
The Story: You know this one, I’m sure. Noah builds a boat. Noah gets the animals in two-by-two. Big flood comes and washes everything away. Noah & his family are the only survivors. They re-populate the Earth. There ya go.
This book bounces from perspective to perspective: Noah, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law and we get to experience the flood in all these different lights. We get to see them argue and bicker and help each other out and work their butts off. What you get, in the end, is a more complete look at what it may have looked like to live for months in cramped quarters with thousands of animals and your family members while this giant historical event is happening right outside your window.
What I Thought: I haven’t read too many re-tellings of Biblical stories just because I generally get annoyed at the agenda that Christian Fiction tries to push. I did read Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve and really loved it. I loved the new, fresh perspective, the humor, and the way he relied on the Bible but also added his own bit of humanity to the story.
I can say the exact same thing for this book. I cannot tell you how impressed I was. David Maine didn’t take off on this “God faked us out, Noah is a crazy dude” tangent, nor did he get all pompous and preachy. The tone that he struck was pretty much perfect for the events that were happening and it just made these characters seem very real.
This could have been written as this long, dense, heavy book but it’s really not. It was super short- maybe 250 pages or so- and I finished it in just a few hours of reading. It was light and easy to read. I would almost recommend it as bedtime reading to my friends who have middle-school age kids, but there’s far too much “rutting” going on here for that. Meh. Oh well. I’ll recommend to the parents instead.
Conclusion: Give this one a go. It’s a quick little read that kind of fleshes out a story that everyone has heard but maybe not put a lot of thought into. I guarantee that it will make you laugh a little and reconsider how these events actually took place. Fun, fun.
2 Comments
That does sound like a fun spin to the story. Interesting Jacki
I loved The Preservationist. If you haven’t already read it, I also recommend David Maine’s Fallen, in which he gives the same treatment to the story of Cain and Abel. He tells in reverse order, starting from the eve of Cain’s death, going back to the banishment.