REVIEW: Michele Chynoweth — The Wise Man (BOOK)
It’s a telling way to start a book. In a sense, the opening sequences of Michele Chynoweth’s new work The Wise Man starts with destruction. But then, both narratively and in terms of thematic presentation in the story, said destruction becomes a sort of literal and metaphorical creation. While Chynoweth makes her book an unapologetic love letter to the purity and universality of Christian values, she also pulls from an ideological index that simply put is solid wisdom. It makes even the most dour passages of the book feel inspirational, educational even. “At least I wasn’t disbarred.
URL: https://michelechynoweth.com/
Finn knelt in the small side chapel in the Basilica in Washington, DC, after lighting a candle, ruminating over the mess he’d made the past few years, wishing he would have just stayed an attorney and kept life simple. Now his license to practice law was suspended by the Illinois Bar Association, and he had tainted his legacy as a former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court…All because of the seven deadly sins,” Chynoweth writes. “…(Finn) knelt back in the pew and looked up at Jesus hanging on the wooden crucifix. Haven’t I been humbled enough? (he) asked. He was still living with his mother. He was driving a used gray Pontiac, forty minutes to and from work as an assistant legal aid for the National Right to Life Committee at its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
Once the suspension on his license was lifted, he hoped to become an attorney for the NRLC. Finn knew that even though the Supreme Court had, in effect, completely overturned Roe v. Wade, there would always be protestors wanting to reverse it back, presidents who sat liberal justices on the court with new opinions, legislators lobbying for bills to change the laws. But right now, I feel like a school kid — living with my mommy, driving a beat-up old car, working as an assistant to an assistant. What a sad little life. And there it is, he thought. Humility isn’t humiliation but acceptance and contentment that I will go back to being just another attorney, just another guy, just another bozo on the bus…How lucky am I, Lord?”
While one could argue The Wise Man is predominantly a modern-day clothing of Biblical stories’ bones with flesh, I think what Chynoweth has accomplished goes deeper than that. She’s worldly, self-aware, and someone who is thoughtful and articulate about how to reexamine Christian theological themes in a context that the widest possible audience can appreciate and understand. There’s no sense Chynoweth ever puts herself in a position, narratively-speaking, to have to exchange one set of potential complications for another. “All my novels are standalone books that modernize an individual Bible story and are not written as a series; however, since Solomon’s story dovetails with that of his father, King David, The Wise Man is also somewhat of a sequel to one of my former novels, The Peace Maker,” Chynoweth notes at the beginning of the read.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Man-Michele-Chynoweth/dp/1649495811
“Readers will see some of the same characters in both novels. Although they don’t need to be read in order, I hope fans of The Peace Maker will love The Wise Man as well. Most of all I hope this latest novel inspires you to recommit yourself to your faith in God and His commands.”
Colin Jordan
