Jesus saves

by Darcey Steinke

Jesus Saves is a chilling horror story, a suburban gothic that explores the darkest limits of human degradation. Set in a landscape of strip malls and feral kudzu-covered dump sites, this book focuses on the other suburbia, not the green manicured lawns and well-tended ranch houses, but the trampled, trash-filled strips of woods lying between subdivisions and superhighways, launchpads for adolescent ritual, whose sacramental remnants are discarded beer cans and charred wood. At the center of this community are two girls: Sandy Patrick, who has been abducted from summer camp and now smiles from missing-child posters all over town; and Ginger, a troubled minister's daughter, whose fixation on Sandy borders on obsession. Ultimately, these two young women are brought together by a violent and dispossessed man who leads them into a night of diabolical terror and the final confrontation between the sacred and profane.