Godsend is John Wray's intriguing novel about a disaffected Californian teenager named Aden who travels with her friend Decker to the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. Aden shaves her head and disguises herself as a boy to study at a madrassa, an all-male religious school. She intends to memorize the Quran and lead a pious, Islamic life, as part of her jihad, or personal struggle, to fill the spiritual emptiness of her former life. Decker, on the other hand, is restless as soon as they arrive. Invited to cross the border into Afghanistan and join the local mujahideen, or Islamist guerrilla fighters, he jumps at the opportunity. Aden follows him, as much out of curiosity as fear for his well-being. She soon realizes that behind their pious facade, the mujahideen's version of Islam--violent, swollen with hypocrisy--bears no resemblance to the peaceful Islam she came to this part of the world to discover.
Godsend is powerful and poignant, all the more so because Wray (The Lost Time Accidents) does not spoon-feed readers tired clichés about Islam and terrorism or life along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Instead, he provides plenty of space for them to draw their own conclusions about Aden, Decker and the people they encounter. Aden remains emotionally isolated no matter how religious she becomes, and Wray reveals little of her inner life, possibly to reproduce that same feeling of isolation in the reader--reminiscent of Mohsin Hamid's unforgettable narrator in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Aden, however, is no fundamentalist, she is a frightened girl involuntarily caught up in a violent struggle with no peaceful end in sight. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer