The Rapture of Canaan

April 1997 Oprah Book Club® Selection: In addition to serving the Lord throughout the day and night, members of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind await the Rapture, which occurs shortly before Christ's Second Coming and marks the point at which the saved will be taken bodily to heaven and the damned will be left behind to endure a millennium of suffering on earth. Grandpa Herman, the creator of Fire and Brimstone, predicts that the hardship would be unpleasant: "He predicted that we would run out of food. That large insects would follow us and sting us with their tails... He predicted that when we turned on the bathroom faucet, all that would come out would be blood. He predicted that we wouldn't perish even though wicked crowds would come to us and amputate our limbs. 'But you don't have to be left behind,' he would then continue. If you would simply open your hearts to Jesus, you and all of God's precious children may go directly to Heaven."

Ninah Huff, the fifteen-year-old narrator in Sheri Reynolds's second book, The Rapture of Canaan, finds such discussion of damnation to be rather upsetting. Ninah places nettles in her bed and pecan shells in her shoes to divert her attention from thoughts of her prayer companion James that are immoral. However, focusing on Jesus' Passion cannot ultimately stop Ninah and James from becoming passionate for one another, and the results prove to be devastating and transformative for the whole community.

Reynolds has accomplished something of a miracle herself in writing The Rapture of Canaan, a book on miracles. The members of the church are complex and incredibly sympathetic, despite the extreme nature of their beliefs and practices (such as mortifying flesh with barbed wire and sleeping in an open grave). This is because they struggle with the contradictions of Fire and Brimstone's theology, the temptations of the outside world, and the weaknesses of human nature.