The Challenge of Writing Novels About Faith and Religion
The best way to approach issues of faith in a novel – or anywhere else – is to do so with great respect. Yet, try as one might, novels such as these are not for everyone.
The imperative of writing any novel is that it must tell a good story, by which I mean one that enables the reader to suspend disbelief, engages the reader’s imagination, and makes the reader keep turning pages. If a novel doesn’t do these things, then it will not appeal to any reader, let alone readers of a particular faith or religion. So, in a way, the challenge of writing novels about faith and religion that appeal to a variety of religious believers as well as to non-believers is the same challenge that every novelist faces. The novel must tell a compelling story.
My novels are very much about the conflict between belief and lack of belief, as first laid out in The Flight of the Veil. Although raised as an Orthodox Jew in Greece, one of my main characters, Nicky Covo, becomes an avowed atheist when he realizes that the Nazis have murdered the rest of his family. In contrast, his younger sister, Kal – from whom Nicky has been separated – is miraculously rescued by the Theotokos, the Mother of God, whereupon she becomes Sister Theodora, a devout Orthodox Christian nun. More spectacularly, the Theotokos miraculously saves Nicky himself from certain death as he fights with the partisans. When these siblings reunite 47 years later, Nicky’s atheism clashes with Kal’s devotion to a Supreme Being. This juxtaposition of beliefs lies at the center of the story and its resolution – or lack thereof – must be important to the reader. If it’s not important to the reader, then the novel hasn’t worked.
Similarly, in To See God, the key conflict is between Theodora’s ardent belief that her black seven-year-old grandnephew in America – Jackie Covo – is the Second Coming of Christ and the Orthodox Church portrayal of the Second Coming in an irreconcilably different way. Additional conflict arises between Theodora’s intense need to visit Jackie and the equally urgent need of the monastery’s abbess, Fevronia, to guide Theodora’s beliefs into more Orthodox channels. If these conflicts are important to the reader, then the novel has overcome its first major hurdle; if not, no amount of doctoring will make the novel work.
And what about the possibility that the writer might get details wrong, particularly if writing about a tradition not his own? The answer is extensive research and care. As a Jew, I was helped in these novels by close relatives and friends of the Orthodox Christian faith. Mistakes still, if any, are my own responsibility. If I have minimized mistakes and told a gripping story, then I’ve done my job as a novelist.