Jesus Boy

Selected as WLRN's Sundial's January 2019 Book Club Pick

Allen has created a consummate tragicomedy of African American family secrets and sorrows, and of faith under duress and wide open to interpretation. Perfect timing and crackling dialogue, as well as heartrending pain balanced by uproarious predicaments, make for a shout-hallelujah tale of transgression and grace, a gospel of lusty and everlasting love.
--Booklist

Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu--the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict's daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand.
--The New York Times Book Review, on All or Nothing

Into an austere community of Christian believers at the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters come the star-crossed African American Romeo and Juliet. In the world of Jesus Boy, Romeo is sixteen-year-old Elwyn Parker, a devout and sincere piano prodigy who learns too late that the saintly girl he has had a crush on all his life is inexplicably pregnant and soon to be wed. Juliet is the beautiful widow, Sister Morrisohn, age forty-two, who, in the pain and confused emotions of her grieving, ends up in Elwyn's arms.

Despite the problems posed by their age difference and the strict prohibitions of their strong religious beliefs, Elwyn and Sister Morrisohn's love is true, and as it grows among the ascetics, abstainers, and holy ghost rollers of their church, it exposes with wit, poignancy, and insight the dark secrets and ancient crimes of the pious. In Jesus Boy, Elwyn learns through tragedy and epiphany that the holy are no different from the rest of us.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 04/01/2010
ISBN: 9781936070046
Pages: 364
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 7.90h x 6.10w x 1.20d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 12/14/2009 pg. 36
Booklist 02/01/2010 pg. 24
Library Journal 04/15/2010 pg. 72
New York Times Book Review 05/16/2010 pg. 8