Assemble a group of novelists, poets, professors and journalists and ask them to write an essay on a book of the Bible that has special meaning for them and there's a good chance the result will be a book that will enlighten, provoke and at times infuriate readers. Whether believers or skeptics, the 32 contributors literary agent Andrew Blauner has recruited to that task do an admirable job sharing their strikingly diverse perspectives in The Good Book.
Touching on both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, these essays overlap little in substance or style. The strongest pieces are rooted less in religious doctrine than they are in the life experiences of their authors. Lois Lowry, for one, evokes the Book of Ruth in telling the story of the marriage of her son, a United States fighter pilot serving in Germany, to a native of that country. Similarly engaging is Samuel Freedman's story, tied to the enigmatic account of the prophet Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones, of how he "learned how to be a Jew at a black church."
As The Good Book's contributors demonstrate, whether it's viewed as a source of spiritual guidance, a work of literature or history or simply as an anchor for memory, in the hands of writers as talented as the group Andrew Blauner has gathered here, the Bible's riches are both inexhaustible and infinitely challenging. That's enough to make one hope that a sequel to this stimulating book, featuring a different chorus of voices, might be in the works. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer