Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
What would happen if God were to judge the modern-day city of Washington D.C. the way God judged the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Biblical tale?

BOOK REVIEW:
Preachers throughout American history have used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a cautionary tale to warn their congregations away from sin, particularly the sin of being gay. In Yeva Wiest’s satirical novel Dangling, they’ve gotten it exactly backwards, and certain right-wing pastors are about to get the shock of their lives.

Dangling opens in 1741 Connecticut, where the Rev. Jonathon Edwards is giving one of his hellfire-and-brimstone sermons. As he warns the congregation that the Lord holds their lives over the pits of hell, dangling as a spider from the thinnest of webs, Reverend Edwards barely notices the two small children sitting in the pew. One is a sturdily built boy with black, curling hair. The other is a frail, pale redhead of indeterminate sex, presumably a girl.

The boy is called Michael, and the “girl” is Gabriel, who is often referred to as “s-he.” What the Reverend Edwards cannot guess is that the two are heavenly angels, the same Michael and Gabriel written of in the Bible. Angels are able to choose their sex, and Gabriel refuses to choose.

Fast-forward to Connecticut, two hundred fifty years later. Michael and Gabriel listen in on a sermon preached by the Rev. Bob Haggard to a congregation including the President and First Lady of the United States. As the Reverend speaks lovingly of Exit Only, a program claiming to convert gay people to heterosexuality, Michael and Gabriel hit upon a plan to teach the Religious Right a lesson. Before their plan can come to fruition, the angels will need to recruit some unlikely allies, including the First Lady and Bart Dawton, the son of Exit Only’s founder. By the time they’ve finished Washington will never be the same again.

Dangling jumps back and forth between the twenty-first century, the eighteenth century, and Biblical times, perfectly apropos to a story starring ageless, immortal beings to whom chronology means little. It also jumps locations and points of view, making for a briskly paced, but occasionally frustrating, read. The satire is clearly a dart aimed at the recently ended George W. Bush administration. At times, the dart hits its mark, as in the revelation that Dr. Dawton’s wife, Mary Louise, is not quite the conservative Christian woman she seems to be. Light comic touches abound, while at other times, the novel’s “arrogance is destruction” theme is laid on rather thick.

Even with this rhetorical material, though, Wiest is a talented writer. Time will tell whether Dangling will be the “A Modest Proposal” of its generation.

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