Book Review: Safe at Home and Crossing the Lines by Richard Doster

It’s rare that I read modern Christian fiction. The vast majority is, just to be honest, simply horrible. Predictable plots, the obligatory conversion scene and bad writing, not to mention an overwhelming market for apocalyptic and amish fiction, make Christian fiction little better than dime store romance novels (without the actual sex until after marriage of course!).

I have found a few exceptions. Jeffery Overstreet writes great and original fantasy fiction. Andrew Peterson writes some great young adult fiction. Marilynne Robinson did win a Pulitzer, but her books aren’t published by a Christian publisher, so I don’t know if she counts. I’m sure there are others……I just can’t think of any more right now (open to suggestions, though). I can add a new author to the list, Mr. Richard Doster has written two exceptional novels: Safe at Home is the first and Crossing the Lines is the sequal.

Doster has been an editor and contributor at byFaith magazine, a publication of the Presbyterian Church in America for many years. He only recently turned his talented pen to fiction.

Safe at Home is a story about a small town sports writer named Jack Hall who covers minor league baseball for the local paper in the 1950′s. He loves the south, loves his town and friends, loves his church doesn’t want anything more than to enjoy the simple life of family, friends and baseball.

His life is changed when he happens to watch a game in the black side of town on a slow day and watches young Percy Jackson play. Jackson is a prodigy and Hall quickly befriends his father over their mutual love of good baseball. Hall gets caught up in events bigger than himself as his desire to report the truth about Jackson, his friendship with the Jackson family and his desire to save the Whitney Bobcat baseball team by getting them to sign the young African-American prospect conflict with his desire for a quiet life with his friends and peace at home. He finds himself caught in a struggle much bigger than himself.

I loved this book. The writing was solid. Doster is not going to win the Pulitzer, but he knows what he’s doing. More importantly, it was a good story. Doster knows the south and he knows baseball and he uses this knowledge as the backdrop for a powerful story.

Perhaps the two things that set this book apart from other Christian fiction is it’s subtlety and it’s truthfulness. Subtlety is rare  indeed in Christian fiction. Doster understands that the Christian writer needs not use fiction as a vehicle for systematic theology or as a thinly veiled Gospel tract. The faith of Jack Hall and his family is always there, Doster doesn’t shy away from it, but there is more substance to the story which leads us to the second great thing about the book.

Doster weaves a truthful story. Jack Hall, even though he is a Christian, is still a sinner in need of grace. Throughout the story there is a gentle reminder that the Christian culture in the south needed, and still does need, sanctification. Jack’s wife struggles with complex issues of integration, her own faith and family. Doster doesn’t vilianize the Southerners opposed to integration, but he tells the truth, ultimately showing that a man who takes a stand on an issue like integration and race, even among friends, is going to find out that he isn’t so safe at home.

Although it is a sequel, Crossing the Lines is radically different than the simple, subtle story in Safe at Home. Because of the incidents in the previous book, Jack Hall accepts a job at the Atlanta Journal to cover the Atlanta Crackers baseball team. But when legendary Journal editor Ralph McGill sends Hall to Montgomery to cover rumored bus boycott, things start to get crazy.

The rest of the novel follows the Hall family in Forrest Gump fashion as they interact with the movers and shakers of the Civil Rights movement as well as leading cultural voices of the South. Hall befriends or interviews everyone from Martin Luther King Jr., Furman Bisher, John Lewis, Sam Phillips (record producer and founder of Sun Records), B.B. King, Johnny Cash and Flannery O’Conner.

To be honest the story started to get lost beneath the weight of the historical encounters. This was a page turner for me because I love the South, I’m from Georgia, so I was intrigued by the stories of Ralph McGill and Furman Bisher at the Atlanta Journal, I’m a huge fan of Flannery O’Conner and have a great respect for Martin Luther King, Jr. I also love history. Doster wants to paint a true picture of the south, the good with the bad, the grace with the depravity. In this he makes an extremely compelling argument. He also was meticulous in his research bringing historical figures to life on his pages. The interview with Flannery O’Conner was particularly exceptional.

The books are a stark contrast, one presenting the microcosmic picture of the small town south during the Civil Rights movement, the other gives the macro view. In final analysis I think that Safe at Home has a much more broad appeal for anyone and stands as an excellent contribution to southern fiction. Doster is certainly a writer to keep your eye on and I can’t wait to see what he spins out next.