Danny Gospel , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - David Athey

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119 pages

English

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A riveting quest for true love, capturing the journey of a wounded soul toward hope restored. Perfect for readers of Charles Martin or Dale Cramer.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 avril 2008
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441205001
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Advance Praise for Danny Gospel
Sorrow and joy are at the wheel in a wild ride on the back roads of Iowa and beyond. Climb in, hang on, and hope.
Paul J. Willis, author of Bright Shoots of Everlastingness: Essays on Faith and the American Wild
Danny Gospel lingers like a dream, as poignant as Danny s search for a normal, happy life, which is as elusive as it ought to be, as it must be.
Michael Larson, author of What We Wish We Knew
Danny Gospel is as compelling and engrossing a read as I have had lately. Written in the tradition of Holy Fool stories, Danny will humble your heart and invite your soul to reconsider some of its assumptions.
Phyllis Tickle, author of Shaping of a Life
The imagery and descriptions of nature within this work are rich and vivid. Athey is a true master of the English language. This novel is an instant classic.
Jess Moody, author of Club Sandwich and A Drink at Joel s Place
If song is the doubling of prayer, as the saying goes, then Danny Gospel, in singing the story of a life, transmutes it into a prayer and draws the reader s life too into that full-voiced song and prayer charged with the power of praise and grace.
Seraphim Joseph Sigrist
David Athey has written a Gospel novel, and not merely because of its title. It is a dreamlike and mystical narrative that takes us inside the mind and life of a Christian who has sought to seize the Kingdom in the midst of sorrows and failures. At a time when much so-called Christian fiction is obscenely sentimental, Danny Gospel is a bracing and honest book.
Ralph C. Wood, author of Flannery O Connor and the Christ-Haunted South
What is a song? It is a perfectly expressed emotion. It is words that dance. It is a place one returns to again and again, like a rhyme, like a home. It is a cry to heaven. Danny Gospel is a song. David Athey sings it.
Dale Ahlquist, President, American Chesterton Society
We all know, whether we know it or not, what a good novel is: it s the one we don t want to stop reading, the one we don t want to end, and that is true of Danny Gospel . For those who love language this work is a feast. . . .
Although there is a good deal of humor in it, one cannot read it without thinking deeply about life, faith and the struggle to believe in a saving God of power and love. Danny Gospel is the best American novel deliberately written from a Christian perspective.
Professor James B. Anderson, St. Cloud State University
Danny Gospel is a tale charged with sorrow and suffering and hope and beauty. From the very first chapter, you will be whisked into a world of vivid detail, into a surreal existence in which every turned corner offers a sense of mystery. A cast of peculiar and diverse characters and a series of well integrated flashbacks help to unravel Danny s winding road to redemption.
Skylar H. Burris, Editor, Ancient Paths Literary Magazine
Magical, mythical, profound, Danny Gospel takes us from the lost family farms of Iowa to the lost beaches of Florida and manages to cover everything: faith, doubt, kindness, cruelty, redemption and passion.
Faith Eidse, Ph.D., co-editor, Unrooted Childhoods
The Great Old Truths don t change. But from generation to generation we need to hear them from new voices speaking in new ways. . . . This is a wonderful, valuable book, a joy to read, and a wonderful song to know our lives are part of.
Dr. Jack Hibbard, English Department, St. Cloud State University
Danny Gospel
a novel
David Athey
Danny Gospel Copyright 2008 David Athey
Cover design by Eric Walljasper
Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Athey, David.
Danny Gospel / David Athey.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7642-0444-9 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3601.T485D36 2008
813 .6-dc22
2007036281
To Kathleen Anderson, Dave Long, and everyone else who helped with this novel.
Thank you for believing.
-DA
Contents
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
about the author
chapter one
WE PLAYED OUR first concert by torchlight near the river. Free of charge, our old-fashioned act attracted a crowd to the hymns and spirituals that most people know by heart. Amazing Grace, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Kum Ba Yah, I ll Fly Away . . .
My father, an ex-marine, was a Johnny Cash look-alike. He stood tall yet slumped in a black suit and wailed baritone. I stood next to him and added my ten-year-old voice to the cause. Grandmother, in a white Sunday dress, sat on a stool and strummed a sweet guitar. Jonathan wore jeans and a T-shirt and strutted with his banjo, grinning at the girls. Holly, our little tomboy princess, joyfully fiddled an old violin. And Mother, so mythological with her long black hair wisping to the ground, plucked the crowd skyward with her Celtic harp.
That summer of 1986, we performed free concerts all over Iowa-at fairs, festivals, and churches. And we became so famous that people began forgetting our family name. Everyone started calling us the Gospel Family.
On nights when there were no concerts, we gathered on our porch and sang to the fireflies under the stars. And I believed the songs about the Promised Land were really about our farm.
Fifteen years later, the farm was just a memory and everyone in my family was dead, except for my brother, who rarely spoke to me. I was living in a trailer park in Iowa City and working as a mail carrier, delivering so much junk and so many bills. Every morning I met college girls traipsing off to class, the intelligence of God apparent in their walking, as if their graces could keep the world forever spinning in ecstasy. I was miserable, and went home after work and read books about hermits in the woods, monks in the cliffs, and warriors of prayer in the desert. One story that struck me was about a young man who wanted to shine. He sought out an elder who lifted his hands like tree branches to the sky, fingers glowing like candles. The elder challenged the young man, Why not become all fire?
I scribbled in the margin of the book: God is light .
Carrying the mail was relatively easy, and almost every day I was offered fresh baked goods-cookies, bars, brownies, and cupcakes-from apron-wearing ladies who greeted me at their doors. Because of so many sugars, I soon gained a grunting weight and had to put myself in serious training. Every night in my living room, I did hundreds of sit-ups and push-ups, followed by a strenuous reading of the lives of skinny, fiery lovers of God.
After showering, I d collapse into bed and stare up at a mural of the Garden of Eden that I d painted on the ceiling, the colors softly glowing in the dim light from a nearby streetlamp. I d stare for hours and hours, wondering: why would anyone give up Paradise?
In the mornings, bleary-eyed, I d crawl out of bed and deliver the mail. The junk and the bills. More junk and more bills. Even the greeting cards in their festive envelopes made me depressed. I forced smiles for the apron-wearing ladies and their gifts of baked goods, and they looked at me with pity, because it was obvious that I wasn t living a real life.
One clear windy day with red-orange autumn leaves swirling into the sky, Mrs. Henderson gave me a sprinkle cookie, and asked, Danny, why don t you start another gospel band? Why not play with your brother?
I answered, I don t sing anymore. Thanks for the cookie. Here s your mail.
At the age of twenty-five, I felt lost and worthless, walking in circles, day after day, enduring the sweet old ladies, the traipsing college girls, and the whims of every sort of weather. I moped home after work, opened books about holiness, and then sweated through my exercises, making my body suffer. And I always prayed, deep into every night. Flat on my back in bed, with a luminous Adam and Eve looking down from the ceiling, I repeatedly asked for the same old thing: a normal happy life.
It didn t happen, and it didn t happen, until that morning in October 2001, when she appeared in my bedroom.
She was an average woman, perfectly lovely, dressed in white. She leaned down and kissed me lightly on the lips. Trembling, I wondered: is this normal and happy, or just a dream? The woman said something wonderful with her eyes. I reached up to touch her face. I whispered, Are you-
She disappeared from the room.
And I had to follow her.
I pulled on a pair of jeans, forgetting about shoes and a shirt, and rushed out into the sunrise. Where could the woman be hiding? She wasn t in my front yard. She wasn t in my backyard. Smiling, enjoying the chase, I climbed into my pickup and searched around the trailer park. Nothing. No sign of her. Yet I could still taste the kiss, and it felt stronger when I sped out to the shimmering cornfields, and I believed that my life was like a favorite book now turning to the happiest chapters. And I imagined a heavenly wedding, and everything in the world was like the first day of creation, as if every death specter that had plunged into me since baptism had been kissed clean away.
And then a hog truck appeared. The rig was covered with mud and filth, about to crash into me. A prayer for help