A fictional faith journey that I was glad to be a part of… ~  Sheila

I meet Jesus on the day I get home from the war. I’m on the beach, but I don’t know how I got here. My mind is as dark as the night. . . . I spend the whole night on the beach. But when the sun’s faint light begins to bend around the Earth, I see him. . . . There, coming toward me, out of the light, is a man. . . . Behind the man a faint curtain of light rises to the sky out of the ocean. He wears the light like a robe, though I see he’s dressed like me. Jeans and a T-shirt, no shoes. And that he’s older than I am, a lot older, maybe mid-thirties. He walks right toward me. He walks right into my eyes.

So begins the spellbinding story of Warren Harlan Pease, a young U.S. Army sniper freshly returned from the Iraq War to his native New Hampshire. What follows is a page-turning adventure that is also a powerful meditation on religion and war, love and loss.

The Last Day answers questions and asks many more. Armed with a sniper’s rifle and his deeply held faith, Specialist Pease travels across ideological borders and earns an appreciation for his enemy’s culture and for what connects us all as human beings. “War doesn’t test your faith in Jesus,” Warren comes to realize. “It tests your faith in yourself.” Upon returning home, he spends an entire day with Jesus visiting and contemplating his own life with fresh eyes, and a willing heart. He examines his relationship to those he loves, and grapples with the pain he has been carrying inside since the death of his mother when he was just a boy.

In My Opinion:

Iraq war (or any war really) would not hit my favorite topics in any format, especially in reading.  However, I dipped a cautious eye into this novel and found myself reading it as a memoir.  And it is not a memoir, but a character, not a real person, but Warren Harlan Pease.  And…. I find out …. I like Warren.

I enjoyed the banter back and forth between Warren and Jesus.  The book mainly swirls around the theme of faith and takes us from Warrens life as a young child to his relationships with parents and into the war.  I had moments of tears and moments of laughter as I read.  In some parts of the book the war topic goes over my head but the basic message of the book was interesting and I found the book overall a good read.

I received my ARC from LibraryThing