tlashop.com

Grady Harp wrote on 08/12/2011:

Chris Parker takes on a host of concepts in this his first novel. Born in 1976 in Montgomery, Alabama, his family moved to Germany when he was four. He studied social pedagogy and German language and literature. Parker lives in Bonn, where he works as a free writer. Behind all of this interesting information about a new writer is the fact that apparently SALVATION is based on a true story: is the experience the writer's (the story takes place in Tennessee while Parker is from Alabama) or is it based on the sharing of a friend's journey or just a combination of ideas based on the principles of dealing with sexual identity? In the long run the stimuli for the book are less important than the issues they raise. The concept of inheritance of sexual identity versus the concept of learned (read peer influence) identity is still a hotly debated topic, especially by the conservative religious right who support the theory that same sex relationships are a sin and an abomination and that sexual identity can be changed by therapy - despite the scientific investigation to the contrary.

Chris Parker names his main character Jeremiah and to this reader it appears the name was purposefully chosen. According to biblical reference the prophet Jeremiah 'spiritualized and individualized religion and insisted upon the primacy of the individual's relationship with God.' He is referred to as the weeping prophet who proclaimed (among other things) 'Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. Attack you they will, overcome you they can't.' Parker's Jeremiah comes from a well to do family who discover Jeremiah's preference for same sex attention. The family is deeply religious and decides to place Jeremiah in a camp where the church runs a rigid and intense therapy program determined to 'Change you can'. Jeremiah wants to be loved and appreciated and 'normal' and he goes along with the interment in the isolated camp. He struggles psychologically between desire to fulfill his physical needs and his intention to 'change' into a 'normal heterosexual male'. But the environment of the camp - a camp attended by both males and females with various needs for change - is run by priests and sociologists and psychologists and he is tended by a strange therapist named Amy who picks up on Jeremiah's attraction to the flagrantly gay Chester. The manner in which Jeremiah and Chester, along with the other members of his confreres, relate results in a major change in Jeremiah's perception of himself and unleashes a host of responses that allow him to experience passion and eventually encourage him to take part in a surprising ending.

Parker paces his novel well. Not all of the characters are adequately fleshed out to make them memorable (some of them the reader will elect to consider highly forgettable!) and there is a tendency to separate the characters into black and white categories. But the fact that the story is based on a true one makes the novel harrowing and magnetic to read. Chris Parker seems to have a lot of stories to tell if we can judge by the brief asides he touches upon. He is an author to watch. Grady Harp