Tag Archives: Rick Dewhurst

Fiction, Reviews

‘Halo Dolly,’ by Rick Dewhurst

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Rick Dewhurst, I have it on good authority (Phil’s), is a good guy. He’s also a good – if quirky – writer. And I can only assume he has masochistic side, because he keeps sending me his books to review, even though I can sometimes be hard on them.

His Joe LaFlam series is particularly challenging to me. In the first book, Bye Bye Bertie, we were introduced to Joe as a delusional young Christian man. His real name was John Doe, he didn’t know what city he lived in, and he thought he was a private eye when he was actually a cab driver.

Through his subsequent adventures, he has become Joe LaFlam in fact, and has been united with his real parents, who are billionaires. So as Halo Dolly begins he is living and working in a penthouse (in a big city “a lot like Seattle”), running a detective agency with his friends Alfred (a former hit man, now a Christian) and Abner (a former drunk, now a conspiracy-minded Christian). A beautiful (and rich) young woman named Grace (also a Christian, of course) walks into the office saying she needs protection from a kidnapping threat. Joe immediately takes the job (not unmindful of the fact that Grace is very good marriage prospect), and it doesn’t take long for Grace to be kidnapped from right under their noses. So begins a series of implausible and slapstick developments which lead them to his old menace, the sinister Spelunkers International organization. And to even more evil forces, including demons from the pit of Hell. Or maybe not.

As with Bye Bye Bertie, I was mostly perplexed as I read Halo Dolly. I never know how to take these books. Bertie is less delusional now than he used to be (probably), but the Christian self-talk in his narration makes me uncomfortable. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to laugh at it. It’s so much like my own self-talk, frankly, that it seems hypocritical. Or else I just don’t get the joke.

I think it may go back to what I call the Aunt Midge Syndrome. That name refers to my own late Aunt Midge, who reacted almost violently once at a family gathering, when the Carol Burnett Show was on. Carol was playing a character with low self-esteem, who talked too much and apologized too much and self-deprecated all the time. I noted that this was precisely what Aunt Midge was like and reasoned, based on her reaction, that people in general aren’t amused by jokes dealing with their own quirks and hang-ups, even ones they’re not aware of. (This is possibly the only insight into human psychology I’ve ever had.) So it may be that I’m just too much like Joe to appreciate the joke.

Anyway, there’s nothing offensive in this book, and much mirth is derived from lampooning popular conspiracy theories – except that they seem to be generally correct here. The joke’s on all of us, I guess.

Thanks to Rick Dewhurst for a free copy.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘Confessions of a Charismatic Christian,’ by Rick Dewhurst

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In spite of the fact that I’ve never given any of his novels a rave review, Rick Dewhurst keeps alerting me to his new books. This argues a level of spiritual humility which I can only admire. I like his writing style, but I don’t think he’s ever found his real vehicle.

He has a new book out now, in a different genre entirely. It’s a spiritual memoir called Confessions of a Charismatic Christian.

It wasn’t, frankly, what I expected. I was anticipating something along the lines of C. S. Lewis’s Surprised By Joy. The plan here is somewhat different. These Confessions are a series of spiritual lessons, each headed by an experience (not related chronologically) from the author’s own life. Sometimes a miraculous one.

I don’t mean to disparage the book’s plan, but I would have enjoyed reading more about the life that produced such an intriguing writer. But it’s a capital mistake to judge a book by what you think it should be, rather than what the author chose to create.

I had some difficulty with the early chapters, which are the heaviest on the charismatic lessons. Rick is the pastor of a charismatic congregation in British Columbia. Although I myself spent time on the periphery of the charismatic movement back in the ‘70s, I have since joined a church that takes a skeptical attitude toward signs and wonders (though not denying their possibility). So I wasn’t entirely in sympathy with a lot of that part. But as I read on, I found more and more material that was profound and edifying for everyone.

I thought the writing a little discursive – the text could have been tightened up some. And the tone is sometimes unnecessarily apologetic. But Confessions of a Charismatic Christian was an edifying book from a seasoned pastor. Worth reading.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Dregs of Aquarius,’ by Rick Dewhurst

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I have a strange reader’s relationship with Rick Dewhurst. My limited, personal online contact with him, as well as my reading of his work, suggests to me that he’s a good guy, a good pastor, and a good writer. Yet I’ve had trouble with his novels. I reviewed his novel Bye Bye Bertie, a satire of evangelical culture presented as a mystery story, and had difficulty seeing the point (I suppose that may mean I’m just the kind of Christian he’s lampooning). His novel The Darkest Valley, which I also reviewed, was a story of a failed ministry. It was far more accessible to me, but kind of a polar opposite of the first book – so realistic and tragic that I had a hard time dealing with it.

His new novel, The Dregs of Aquarius, falls somewhere in between. I think it’s far more successful as a novel, and has the further advantage of being hilarious in parts.

Tom Pollard, the main character, is a hippie in a small British Columbia town, (apparently) sometime in the 1970s. He has a job as a bartender, but his life centers on his circle of stoner friends, some of them American draft dodgers, with whom he regularly gets drunk and high. What seems to him a pretty idyllic existence is marred only by two things – as a result of a head injury, he has recently begun to see spiritual beings, whom he thinks of as gods, hovering in the sky. And his girlfriend Ruby, whom he cares for more than he’s willing to admit, is showing signs of being drawn back to “straight” life, and has gone home to spend time with her parents.

She didn’t really want to control me. She only wanted a real person to relate to, and I didn’t want to be one. But then why would I want to define myself or be defined. I knew that if you began to coalesce around a solid identity, there was a good chance you might be held accountable.

Tom’s adventures climax in a marathon “encounter session” (you’ll remember what those were if you’re old enough) that’s as good an example of escalating slapstick as I’ve ever encountered in a book.

I had a little trouble with the ending of the story, but not because I thought it was badly done or inappropriate. On the contrary, it’s exactly the kind of payoff you look for in a Christian novel. It just struck me as oddly… conventional in a book this eccentric.

But maybe that was the point.

It’s also a little jarring that the main characters of this funny book, Tom and Ruby, are the same people as the pastor and his wife who suffer so in The Darkest Valley. It’s a strange juxtaposition, though I suppose there may be a larger purpose.

In any case, I can recommend The Dregs of Aquarius. Not perfect, but a rare example of a Christian comic novel that works. Also a pretty good evocation of a time which (thankfully) has passed forever. Let’s hope.

Fiction, Reviews

The Darkest Valley, by Rick Dewhurst

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Rick Dewhurst is a writer who confounds me, to a great degree. I wasn’t sure what to do with his mystery, Bye Bye, Bertie, which I reviewed a while back, and now I’m not sure what to do with The Darkest Valley, a very different sort of book. Bye Bye, Bertie was a farce. The Darkest Valley is a tragedy. Neither is easily classified or compared with anything else I’ve read (or you either, in all likelihood).
Tom Pollard is a pastor in the island town of Cowichan, British Columbia. He’s barely hanging on in his ministry. The elders are on the point of kicking him out, and the street ministry center he fought to establish has borne little fruit, but has become a heavy burden with which he gets little help. His only success is Will Joseph, a young Cowichan Indian man. Will dreams of going away to Bible school, but lives in fear that his father, who follows the old ways, will have him kidnapped and brainwashed.
Meanwhile Tom’s wife Ruby is dying of cancer, dreaming of a miracle but worn down with pain, bitterness, and guilt. Tom and Ruby become friends with Jesse Thornton, editor of the local paper, who holds Christians generally in contempt but is avidly pursuing a young woman who attends Tom’s church.
The only thing I can really tell you about the course of the story is that it won’t go where you think it will. This book is true to life, not to Christian fiction conventions. I think that, in Flannery O’Conner fashion, God’s grace is at work in the shadows here, but to be frank the whole thing’s kind of depressing.
The writing isn’t bad, but Pastor Dewhurst needs to watch his homonyms (reigning/reining, tow/toe), and sometimes his sentences are poorly constructed. I’ve seen worse, but I’m pretty sure this author could do better. Also the book is told in alternating streams of consciousness, a technique that bores me after a while.
I recommend The Darkest Valley for Christians eager to struggle with very profound questions of faith. Not for casual entertainment.
I got my review copy free.