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Jesus Land cover art

Jesus Land

Written by: Julia Scheeres
Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans
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Publisher's Summary

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is White. David is Black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children and a violent father.

In this riveting and heartrending memoir Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribea religious reform school in the Dominican Republic is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.
©2006 Julia Scheeres (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Women Art & Literature
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What the critics say

“Like the best writers, Scheeres offers her characters in the fullness of the contradictions they hold in tension, and with great and clear-sighted empathy, and at the end of the audiobook, the listener might say: They’re so much like me.” (Salon.com)

What listeners say about Jesus Land

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I’m sort of neutral on this book

There’s only one even remotely likeable character in the whole book, her brother David. It is a sad story. The author seems to lack self awareness. As an example, she muses how a friend she’s angry with might die soon, if she does, she can get her dead friend’s mattress. Without mentioning that all the of kids she’s dealing with in reform school are desperate. This girl who betrayed her was also suffering. The author is 38, written from a 16 year (or younger) perspective.

I’m not sure what her or the narrator has against Canadians or gay people. The narrator uses her best Bob and Doug accent when talking in the Canadian’s voice and the author calls the him (who is truly a terrible person like everyone else in the book) a f@qq07 throughout.

The book is written and read in a snarky and immature way. It was a compelling story but very much in a train-wreck-can’t-look-away sense.

I don’t recommend it but don’t completely regret listening to it. Would give it 2.5 stars if I could, 3 is generous.

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