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The uneasy genre of biblical fiction often includes what Flannery O’Connor called the “shoddy religious novel,” filled with shallow characters and plot structures as clichéd and melodramatic as 1950s biblical films. The authors of these books are often squeamish about ambiguity and are primarily interested in dramatizing portions of scripture in a 20th-century idiom suitable for commercial television. Walter Wangerin Jr. defies the stereotype and redeems the genre.