Godsend
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In California her name was Aden Grace Sawyer. In Pakistan she must choose a different name – Suleyman – and take on a new identity as a young man. She has travelled a long way to begin her new life, and she’ll travel further to protect her secret.
But once she is on the ground, Aden finds herself in more danger than she could have dreamed. Faced with violence and loss, she must make intense and unimaginable choices that will test not only her faith, but her understanding of who she is.
Compelling, unnerving and timely, Godsend is a subtle masterpiece of empathy: a study of what it means for a person to give themselves to their faith, and how far they will go from home to find a place to belong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wray (The Lost Time Accidents) undermines his promising premise a young American woman joining the Taliban in 2001 with a detached style. Eighteen-year-old Aden Grace Sawyer spitefully leaves her philandering Islamic Studies professor father and nonfunctional mother in Santa Rosa, Calif., to develop her new faith at a madrassa near the Afghanistan border in the summer of 2001. She disguises herself as a young man, assumes the name of Suleyman, and extracts a begrudging promise of secrecy from her travelling companion, Decker. Aden sneaks into the mountain training camp across the border after Taliban commander Ziar Khan recruits only tough-talking Decker. She quickly proves her aptitude for combat but struggles with the leaders' callous indifference and rapid executions over minor missteps. Despite drawing attention to herself with impertinent questions, Aden oddly escapes punishment, convince the leaders she is a boy, and is deployed with a multinational group of zealous fighters. The attacks of 9/11 open her up to deeper scrutiny as an American, as the narrative tumbles to a rapid, unsettled conclusion. Wray provides only delayed, incomplete descriptions of the story's traumatic events; his skimming past powerful emotions will keep readers from developing strong connections to his characters. Nevertheless, Wray communicates a disturbing image of disaffected youth and the lures of extremism.
