Godsend’ by John Wray (2018) – 228 pages

‘Godsend’ is the story of a young woman named Eden Sawyer living in Santa Rosa, California who decides to go over to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. This is the year before 9/11 in 2000.

In real life shortly after 9/11, a young American guy named John Walker Lindh was apprehended as he was fighting along with the Taliban against the US forces who had only recently arrived. He is still in prison. There were rumors that there was also a young American woman also fighting for the Taliban, but these rumors were never confirmed.

Our story starts out in California, and Eden Sawyer is a young college student. She is a Muslim convert who can speak Arabic. Her father is a professor of Islamic studies at Berkeley and her mother is a forlorn drunk. They do not live together. Eden has been interested in Islam for several years and attends the local mosque frequently to participate in religious services. There she meets a boy named Decker whose family is from Pakistan. They both are devout to the Islamic religion.

Eden and Decker decide to go to Pakistan together. On the plane flight there, Aden tells another passenger that she wants to see Afghanistan, because it’s “a place ruled by believers. A country full of people living by the word of God.” First they will attend a madrassa for further religious instruction, and ultimately they will join a Taliban unit operating in Afghanistan. Eden cuts her hair off and disguises herself as a boy in order to join the Taliban. She must constantly fool all the men of the Taliban into believing she is a boy.

John Wray is a talented writer, and he convinces us readers that this all could have happened, no matter how far-fetched it originally sounds. Many of the details regarding joining a madrassa, etc. are taken from what we do know of John Walker Lindh.

My problem is that converting to Islam and joining the Taliban in Afghanistan is about as far removed from my current circumstances as one can get. I usually pride myself on getting interested in any subject as long as the writing is proficient, but I found my interest flagging here as Eden interacts with these bearded turbaned men especially after they all start carrying machine guns. Of course their lives as Mujahideen are rough and primitive. It didn’t help that these men’s world view was even further right-wing than American Christian Evangelicals. That I was able to plow through this novel at all is a testimony to the talent of John Wray as a writer.

Grade: B-