W.M. “Bill” Howe, Leeds, England—

“A collection of ten, richly written and incredibly well-crafted, interweaving stories, set in the small town of Bethlehem, East Texas. Tales of ordinary folk struggling with the mundane, the marvelous, the comedy, the tragedy and the poetry of everyday life. A book to savour and return to.”

Mary B. Ferguson, Texas, USA—

“This wonderful collection of stories goes on my ‘Must Read’ list. I’m recommending it to everyone I know. And I’m giving it away to friends as gifts. The stories are extraordinary. And the writing itself is terrific—clear and direct but also like music.

“Very few authors manage to write honest fiction/literature in which religious belief is the backdrop. And I don’t mean what’s called ‘Christian fiction’ as a genre. I mean fiction that explores what it means to try to live spiritually when conventional religion seems to get in the way. I mean fiction that challenges us and makes us think even as it wildly entertains us!

“In these stories, critically acclaimed writer Christopher Cook manages not only to entertain, but also takes me inside characters who are ordinary people struggling to make sense of their religious beliefs in the context of everyday decisions, relationships, and conflicts with other people. And that’s hard to do! You can’t help but identify with them.

“I’m really happy to see this collection is now an e-book. Christopher Cook takes on very difficult emotional material head-on, and manages to do so in a life-affirming manner. I saw on his web site that he has a new e-book novella called Storm out and I’m excited to read it. I cannot recommend this writer more highly!”

Lon Clark, China—

“Christopher Cook is a superb storyteller. I first became acquainted, and inspired, by Cook’s marvelous ability to yarn tales from his novella, `Storm.’ I quickly moved to another of his works, `Screen Door Jesus,’ and was equally impressed.

“Screen Door Jesus is a collection of 10 short stories whose settings are in and around the small mythical Texas town of Bethlehem. Great stories include great names for their characters, and Cook introduces us to the likes of Mother Harper, Hank Jeters, Abner Huckaby and Mayor Boatwright, Jasper Beaudry, Uncle Booster, Luther, Doss, and Little Red, and a host of others.

“Cook uses his imagination to take us deep into the simple lives of small town people. I found the stories to be rather numinous in the sense that they allow the reader to encounter the sacredness of small town life and the joys and struggles of relationships.

“Like powerful music or an intricate dance, Cook’s style of writing has beautiful timing and rhythm. His timely use of wit and humor softens any sharp edge that may have appeared in the story. He shares vivid word pictures that stimulate the reader’s senses. His marvelous and detailed description of the characters and settings help the reader empathize with the character’s feelings. It is as though you are not reading about a story. Rather, you become part of the story. At its very core, great storytelling is a way of connecting people with similar experiences. Cook pulls this off magnificently.

“Each of Cook’s stories amuses, entertains, inspires, and touches the soul. At the very least, they make you feel good.”

P. C. Wagner—

“Christopher Cook’s stories resonate with authenticity. Although his characters often are steeped in rural communities, they ask questions and raise issues common to everyone who is alive and all who ponder why are we here and what are we supposed to do with our lives. His characters ask questions many of us are afraid to ask out loud, but their inquiries I suspect often leave readers comforted, knowing they are not alone in their own search for meaning. They have lots of company. And therein hangs Cook’s wonderful tales.

“Cook has an ear for the rhythm of speech. By the end of this book, I found myself speaking with an accent and at a pace not normally mine. In short, Cook is a wonderful writer who can make you gasp as he introduces you to people who are new and yet so familiar. I was sad when I finished the book. I wanted more. I wasn’t yet ready to leave the world Cook has expertly crafted in fine style.”

Jim Freeman, Czech Republic—
 
“’Screen Door Jesus’ is the title story and wonderful it is, but my personal favorite is “Arc of Flesh, Ascending,” and that’s the beauty of these stories. You will enjoy them all, but two or three will stay with you throughout your life. That’s truly memorable writing, to have that power over memory.

“They are Southern stories and Cook is a child of the South, born and raised in East Texas and now an International man, but never far from those Southern roots.

“Integrity as an author comes from deep down and it’s never a reach for Christopher Cook. Read, enjoy and be transported.”

A Reader in Texas—

“Each savory story is a tasty vignette filled with the flavors of East Texas, piney woods, country folk. None so long as to make you feel over-full. This collection is a thoroughly satisfying way to while away an afternoon.”

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Sunday Book Section
January 6, 2002

Piety on parade
Cook slyly examines religious factions and fractions

By BRYAN WOOLLEY / The Dallas Morning News

       Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories
       Christopher Cook

Early in the title story of Christopher Cook’s new collection, Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories, the narrator – a 13-year-old Houston boy exiled to his grandparents’ house in a small Southeast Texas town for the summer – describes his new cultural environment:

“Mostly what they did was religion. A church on every block. Soon as one built up to a hundred members they’d fall into a fight, as if there was some critical mass beyond which people couldn’t get along, and they’d form two new churches, like molecular division. Such disputes were said to be doctrinal. But Grandpa observed that if you peeled away that notion and looked underneath, what you’d find was a clash of personalities and American democracy in action.”

All 10 stories in Mr. Cook’s book are set in Bethlehem, a fictional burg in the steamy swamps and forests northeast of Houston. (In his magnificent thriller, Robbers, published last year, a Texas Ranger pursues two serial killers through this same country.) In all the stories, the people of Bethlehem are “doing religion.”

Some are practicing a sanctimonious, hypocritical, claustrophobic Main Street fundamentalist piety, a religious expression of narrow small-town minds and lives. Others are doing the Bible-thumping, weeping-and-moaning, hellfire-and-brimstone, washed-in-the-blood fundamentalism practiced in the little white-frame Pentecostal and Baptist churches that are tucked amongst the trees along the two-lane highways of the Big Thicket and the Piney Woods. It’s a simple and ruthless religion in which Satan is present and angels and demons fly among us. It’s a religion in which the Antichrist and/or Jesus Christ may appear at any moment.

Neither religion allows for subtle shades of knowledge or interpretation or belief. Neither permits tolerance. Every word of the Bible is literal fact or it’s a lie. A sinner is saved and headed for eternal heaven, or he’s damned by his unbelief and bound for eternal torture.

Both faiths are replete with miracles and curses, punishments and dark emotion. Sometimes they’re funny.

In “Screen Door Jesus,” Mother Harper, while watering her gladiolas, beholds the image of Jesus in her screen door. This miracle, which she perceives at first as a blessing, turns into a curse. In “And I Beheld Another Beast,” Veralynn Cunningham surreptitiously has her visiting grandchildren baptized at the Holiness Tabernacle, precipitating a crisis with their father and his new Catholic wife.

In “Star Man,” three oilfield hands who are driving to work on a cold Christmas Eve encounter a strange child and his mother in a roadside Waffle House. In “A Tinkling Cymbal” – a gripping fictional meditation on the Good Samaritan – a righteous and prudent banker refuses a loan requested by a down-and-out fellow church member, with dire consequences. In “Heresies,” one of the funny stories, a couple of Pentecostal security guards eavesdrop on a gathering of liberal Protestant ministers at the John Shelby Boone Ecumenical Retreat Center.

Underlying all 10 of Mr. Cook’s stories is a deep and fearless understanding of the Bible. As in Robbers, he’s a master of setting, characterization, dialogue and narrative. The man knows what he’s doing, and why.

GALVESTON COUNTY DAILY NEWS
June 28, 2002

‘Screen Door Jesus’ set in Bolivar

By Manuel Moreno Jr.
Correspondent

CRYSTAL BEACH — As a teen-ager growing up in Port Neches, Christopher Cook got his first glimpse of Jesus Christ. Well, sort of.

Just a couple of blocks down the street from where he lived, an elderly lady discovered her screen door had an image of God’s son miraculously enshrined on it.

“You really had to stretch to see it,” Cook said with a smile.

Thus led to the title of his latest paperback novel, Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories, recently named a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters fiction award.

“My personal belief is that miracles are very common and around us all the time,” Cook added. “But we don’t even notice them. Instead, we look for sensational things.”

Cook, also the author of the award-winning novel Robbers, which is partly set in the Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula areas, will be in Galveston on Saturday for a book-signing session of both books at Galveston Bookshop, 317 Tremont (23rd Street), from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

“‘Screen Door Jesus’ is more of a personal exploration of my own religious upbringings,” he said, noting book clubs have received it well since its release earlier this year.

“It’s a conventional book about people who have differences in their religious beliefs,” Cook added. “Yet they live in a small community, so they can’t avoid one another like they can in a city life.

“I think it deals with very personal questions about spiritual meaning, kinds of questions that people struggle with but often don’t admit to other people because they would be self-conscious or embarrassed.”

“Screen Door Jesus,” in fact, is a title of one of the 10 stories in the book.

There, in the fictional East Texas piney woods town of Bethlehem, where churches of various denominations are located on just about every block and the setting of each of the “doing religion” stories, Mother Harper, while watering her gladiolas, sees a picture of Jesus on her screen door.

“You know, I’ve often wondered why God just doesn’t come down and get on television and make a speech, like the president. Or show up at halftime in the Super Bowl. Make an appearance, tell everyone to straighten up and fly right,” says the 13-year-old Houston boy in the story, who while exiled to his grandparents’ house for the summer months pays a visit to Mother Harper’s house to witness the vision up close.

“That’d be the simple and straightforward approach, it seems to me,” the teen-age boy, acting as the narrator of the story, continues. “But no, instead, He’s got to play cat and mouse, hide the thimble. Wants you to look under the rug, behind the couch, like some joker leaving clues in unlikely places.

“That’s how God is, I suppose. But why? Seems like He could step right out in the open, say ‘boo!’ Instead, you got to go looking for Him, like a game of hide and seek.”

Cook, too, would prefer the simpler approach.

“Religious faith, we make it a complicated thing, with all kinds of rules and regulations,” he said. “Personally, I think the beauty of Jesus’ teachings was his simplicity, because it really boils down to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself,’ which essentially is the golden rule.

“Fact of the matter is we don’t want it that simple. It’s hard to follow the golden rule. It requires more self-discipline than we want. When someone treats us badly, we have a choice between forgiveness or seeking revenge.

“Which one is more gratifying? Revenge feels good. Forgiveness requires some sacrifice and effort. Frankly we’re not a culture that believes in sacrifice and effort. We’re more of a culture who believes in drive-through fast foods.”

Mother Harper eventually dies in the story, and slowly but surely so does the vision.

Ironically, the elderly lady’s house in Port Neches still stands, and the screen door remained in tact on the premises. A memorial to the screen door was even built.

“That’s the way it is with a lot of beliefs,” said Cook, who will return to his current residence of Prague, Czech Republic, on Sunday after a month-long book-signing tour.

“One man’s God is another man’s Zeus,” he added. “It’s harder to see your own (belief) in an objective way. But that’s the human dilemma and not just about religion.”

One of his favorite stories in Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories, which is being made into a movie later this summer, is “Star Man,” where three oil drillers driving to work on Christmas Eve encounter a strange child and his mother in a Waffle House in Alvin.

The child, according to the story, is Jesus.

“If you want to believe something, you will,” Cook said. “And if you don’t
want to believe it, you don’t.”