The book is Lost Mission by Athol Dickson, which weaves together the story of the 18th century founding of a Spanish mission in what is now southern California with the lives of half a dozen people living on or near the decimated mission site in the early 21st century. Their stories intertwine, and the past both haunts and redeems the present.

The book sometimes reads like high literature, lovely in its prose. Other times it reads like a Michael Crichton novel, fast-paced and suspenseful. I suppose this juxtaposition could be jarring, but I mostly just found it fascinating the way Dickson wove together not just elements of the different stories he was telling but also aspects of multiple genres to be able to tell those stories: mystery, suspense, devotional literature, historical fiction, literary fiction.

And I was impressed with Mr. Dickson’s courage in telling this story. The heroine is a devout Christian – and an illegal immigrant from Mexico who sneaks across the border to preach the gospel to the lost souls living in America. Several of the other characters are illegals as well. Given the right-leaning politics of the target audience for this book (it was published by Howard, a Christian book imprint of Simon and Schuster), I expect Mr. Dickson will get some flack for his compassionate portrayal of illegal immigrants and his indicting portrayal of moneyed Southern Californian Christians. Having said that, I fear you will think the book’s characters are simply loved-by-liberals stereotypes. They’re not. They’re flesh-and-blood people with gifts and strengths and some crazy-scary blind spots.

Have I piqued your interest? If so, all you need to do to enter to win a copy of Lost Mission is leave a comment on this post. On Christmas Eve, I’ll have Jack-the-random-number-generator choose a number between one and however many comments there are, and I’ll announce his choice on my blog on Christmas Day.

One of you will get an extra present for Christmas! Woot!

*****

Taproot Theatre Blogathon Update: Thanks to the generosity of Adam Bailey, Scott Cummins, and Tiffany Werner, each comment will raise $4 for Taproot’s reconstruction efforts after the fire. We need 18 more comments to reach our goal, so if you haven’t yet, please go leave a comment on the blogathon post.