The young Samaritan J. Schuyler Sprowles. BookBaby, 2024.
Schuyler Sprowles has written a creative and moving novel that tells the story of a young man from Samaria at the time of Jesus. Through the eyes of this young man named Joshua, we encounter the story of Jesus in a unique and unforgettable way.
Sprowles, who grew up in Chicago, has had a long career as a television journalist and is currently a magazine publisher in California. The Young Samaritan is his first novel. The book moves along at a good pace, beginning in a small village in ancient Samaria, where Joshua faces serious family problems and is forced to leave home. The reader gets a good sense of life in the ancient world through this young man’s experiences.
Joshua spends time with a reclusive uncle and meets a woman who helps him and seems to have prophetic insight. She predicts that Joshua would soon meet the promised Messiah. In fact, he meets Jesus and the apostles on their journey to Samaria.
The author handles the fictional encounters between the boy and Jesus very carefully. Much of what Jesus says is taken directly from the Gospels. We get a sideways glance, so to speak, at well-known biblical stories such as the woman at the well in Samaria and the feeding of the 5,000.
Eventually, the young man travels to Jerusalem and witnesses the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. In fact, the reference to “an unidentified boy fleeing the Garden of Gethsemane after Jesus’ arrest” – recorded in Mark 14:51-52 – served as the inspiration for the novel (p. 252).
Although many New Testament scholars believe the account refers to Mark himself, Sprowles looked at the text in a different way, building the story around a fictional Samaritan youth. The book is full of biblical insights, and the author’s speculations are closely tied to biblical situations. Readers of historical fiction and Christian fiction will find this book particularly entertaining and edifying.
