It’s late 2008. George Bush is retiring from the Presidency, and many Iraqi War veterans are returning from the ongoing war crippled both physically and emotionally. Lucy is a religious teenager on the brink of adulthood. She decides to go on a pilgrimage to visit those who have died through violent acts: from Columbine to Oklahoma City to Waco. Judith is an Iraq War Veteran who has lost her eyesight, arms, and legs. She hasn’t lost her sense of humour though and decides, against the odds, to become a stand-up comedian. George Bush, is, well, a lot like a cartoon version of the living George Bush.  Racked by a guilty conscience for ‘war crimes’ and the vengeance of a range of hypothetical characters, he begins to realise the error of his ways and to redress his wrongs. The stories of Lucy, Judith, and George become subtly intertwined as each undergoes a major life transition. Fraser handles the three threads of the story deftly, and brings them together smoothly in a tale which is both morally sound, and uplifting.

There are a few issues with A Journey, A Reckoning, and A Miracle though. The first is that it’s driven by ideology. It's an ideology that takes precedence over the story itself. In other words, in George Bush’s story at least, there isn’t really an intrinsic thrust to the story. It is being driven, much as Bush is being driven by Mother Nature, by the political positioning of the author. This interferes with the fictive truth of the book. The reader simply cannot forget that the author is telling us how to perceive this situation, how to feel about Bush and the War, and what ought to happen. It’s wish-fulfillment which rings false, detracting from the overall impact of the story. We are being told, rather than shown, that George Bush, the ex-President of the USA, was bad, and that the Iraq War was, and continues to be bad. There is nothing wrong with this kind of polemic, but sticking it so overtly in fiction tends to create characters that are vehicles for a message, rather than well rounded characters with a story.

Article Author: Maggie Ball

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of Repulsion Thrust, Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. …

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