Book Review: The Damascus Way

The Damascus Way, is the third installment in biblical fiction series Acts of Faith by Janette Oke and Davis Bunn, yet I think it could easily be read as a stand-alone book if you’ve not read the previous two in the series.

If you’re very familiar with the story of the Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus in the book of Acts, then the title of this book would suggest to you that it might be about him. It does cover that incident, but until it reaches that point, Paul — known as Saul pre-conversion — is seen once and referred to many times. He is less a character in the story through most of it than a sort of dark cloud of threatening persecution of the believers.

That increasing persecution drove many of the early believers from Jerusalem in the Bible, having the effect of scattering the gospel with them across the land, and that’s the background of the story that is portrayed here. Abigail, the widow of Stephen, reluctantly leaves with her young daughter, Dorcas, and a group of believers heading one way. Jacob, her brother, is a guard for a wealthy merchant’s caravan and becomes a courier for the underground network of believers. One of his contacts, to his surprise, is Julia, the beautiful daughter of his employer.

Julia is the only daughter of the merchant, and though well-to-do, she realizes that she and her mother are not welcomed in the community. Discovering why shakes her world to its core, and her turmoil leads to faith in Christ. She and Jacob are the primary characters in this story, though there are strong subplots involving Abigail as well as Linix and Alban, two Roman soldiers who became believers in the previous books.

I enjoyed seeing how believers from various backgrounds and nationalities who would formerly have been enemies became one in Christ.

And one passage that came back to mind many times after reading it involved the testimony of what we call “the woman at the well.” I knew that she came out to draw water alone at a time when other women were not there because of her shame and her status. I knew that she was surprised that Christ spoke to her in the first place and that He knew all about her. But one sentence in the story said, “He seemed to know all about her, yet He did not shun her” (p. 265). Though the last few words are not explicitly said in Scripture, they are implied, and though I knew that in one sense, in this reading the contrast between the shunning of “good people” and the kindness and respect shown by the Savior really stood out to me.

For all the possible intrigue of the dangerous activities of the couriers and the secrecy of the believers to avoid persecution, you would think this would have been a real page-turner, but the plot seemed to drag to me in a few places, which I don’t remember happening in the previous books. But I may have just been a little “off” somehow while reading it — other reviews of it I have read use words like “sweeping,” “intriguing,” and “vivid.”

Nevertheless, I am glad to have read it and can recommend it. I’m not sure if there will be further books in the series — since it is covering the book of Acts and there are several more chapters after Saul’s conversion, I would hope so. If so, I’ll be looking forward to them.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)