Fast Paced

DEAD SEA RISING is a fast-paced, easy-to-read book, written in the currently popular style of using multiple timelines.

It’s a novel with interconnected stories that excavate buried secrets and hidden treasures in order to provide an understanding of behavior in later times based on the events of earlier periods. In DEAD SEA RISING, Jerry Jenkins links three stories from different eras.

The contemporary story is a portrayal of the attempts of a young highly-educated woman who wants to take charge of an archaeological excavation in Saudi Arabia to get permission to proceed with her work. This part of the novel gives the reader an inside look into the practices of the New York Police Department. Also it’s entertaining to see how benevolent rich patients receive special care in hospitals. This story is like LAW AND ORDER in that it provides a sea of red herrings. I guessed the wrong culprit. Up to the last page, I thought someone else had committed the crime.

Another story presents a look into the Viet Nam war. The scenes are realistic, and the events are tense. The tie between the main characters in today’s New York City and those in Viet Nam decades ago are the natural outcome of the circumstances in the last half of the twentieth century with some surprising twists in the plot.

The earliest story gives insights into Ur of the Chaldees, the home of Abram (Abraham), the patriarch of three of the most influential religions of the world today. Engaging in a covenant with the one living God, he laid the foundation of Judaism. Christianity, which results from the fulfillment of Jewish beliefs and prophecy, also claims him as a father. In Islam he is a revered prophet. DEAD SEA RISING shows life in a realistic way as it was in the time of Abram without violating any details found in the Bible. The character Terah, mentioned numerous times in Genesis, comes alive from the pages of DEAD SEA RISING with the help of Jewish traditional beliefs and Jerry’s imagination.

The concept of changing the relationship between Jews and Arab Muslims by “connecting the pieces of an ancient puzzle” (quoted from the back cover) is large and ambitious, perhaps more than can be achieved in a single book. DEAD SEA RISING is the first book of a series.

Jenkins tells the story in small chapters with carefully selected minimal details. He flips from one time frame to another by alternating the chapters. The reader will notice occasional parallel action, just enough to make it interesting but not often enough to make the novel seem contrived.

An impressive characteristic of all the Jerry Jenkins novels I’ve read is the extensive research of historical events. The selected details help me visualize the scenes, and I realize I’m learning history as I read.