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Jesus Land  By  cover art

Jesus Land

By: Julia Scheeres
Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans
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Publisher's summary

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is White. David is Black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children and a violent father.

In this riveting and heartrending memoir Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribea religious reform school in the Dominican Republic is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

©2006 Julia Scheeres (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Like the best writers, Scheeres offers her characters in the fullness of the contradictions they hold in tension, and with great and clear-sighted empathy, and at the end of the audiobook, the listener might say: They’re so much like me.” (Salon.com)

What listeners say about Jesus Land

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great narration

the book is fantastic, but the narrator truly made it come alive. thanks to all involved for helping me be enamored by this story

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting Perspective

I chose this because of the glowing reviews of Julia’s relationship with her adopted brother in a time when interracial families were not accepted. I found it to be an interesting memoir of growing up with racial inequality, religious indoctrination, and the horror of labor camp reform schools in the late 70’s. It was worth finishing if only to find out how life after labor camp turned out, but instead it ends in tragedy.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Felt contrived until the final chapter

The relationship between the narrator and her adopted black brother is shown through the years. The hypocrisy of her religious parents and the racism in her Indiana hometown were touched upon. I learned a bit about the experience of being a white girl and having black brothers.

The final chapter was worth listening to: a touching section that showed how much she loved her one brother.

However, most of the book was full of overwrought descriptions of the mundane. I fast forwarded through many sections. Heavy use of adjectives that often felt off and many descriptions felt contrived.

The narrator made this story seem harsher than it may be in print. The dialogue was read in irritating "religious" voices that made the content seem like hyperbole. Everyone was an enemy except for her brother and that made the chapters hard to trudge through.

This story would've been better told as an essay.

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5 people found this helpful