The Young Samaritan J. Schuyler Sprowles. BookBaby, 2024.
Schuyler Sprowles has written a creative and moving novel that tells the story of a young man from Samaria at the time of Jesus. Through the eyes of this youth named Joshua, we encountered the story of Jesus in a unique and memorable way.
Sprowles, who grew up in Chicago, has had a long career in television journalism and is currently a magazine publisher in California. “The Young Samaritan” is his first novel. The book moves along at a good pace, beginning in a small village in ancient Samaria where Joshua faces serious family problems and is forced to leave home. The reader gets a good sense of life in the ancient world through the experiences of this young man.
Joshua spends time with a reclusive uncle and meets a woman who helps him and seems to have prophetic insight, predicting that Joshua would soon encounter the promised Messiah. Indeed, he meets Jesus and the apostles on their journey into Samaria.
The author is careful in handling the fictional encounters between the boy and Jesus. Much of what Jesus says is adapted directly from the gospel accounts. We get a sort of sideways glance at familiar biblical stories like the woman at the well in Samaria and the feeding of the 5,000.
Eventually, the young man travels to Jerusalem and is a witness to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. In fact, the reference to “an unidentified boy who flees the Garden of Gethsemane after Jesus’ arrest” — recorded in Mark 14:51–52 —provides the inspiration for the novel (p. 252).
Though many New Testament scholars suggest the account refers to Mark himself, Sprowles considered the text in a different way and built the story around a fictional Samaritan youth. The book is filled with many biblical insights, and the author’s speculations are closely tied to scriptural situations. Readers of historical fiction and Christian novels will especially find this book enjoyable and uplifting.
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