The book Awakening by Claudia Cangilla McAdam addresses questions almost every Catholic teenager faces at one time or another. At the heart of these questions is the reality and value of the sacrifice of Jesus.
The book is about a young lady attending a Catholic school who wants to spend the weekend with a school friend’s family – the problem is, they are not Catholic (despite attending a parochial “for the academics”) and this is Holy Week.
She is ultimately thrown back into time, into a family situation very similar to her own, doing what many of us only dream and sometimes beg to do: speak to Jesus face to face, be held by Him, receive *the* First Eucharist from him (“the brown morsel He held blended with His hand; I couldn’t tell where His fingers ended and the fragment began. It was all the same. The Body of Christ.”), kiss His feet as He dies on the cross, hold onto hope during His time in the tomb because we *know* what will happen.
The character, as well as the reader are faced with many realities:
Even face to face with Jesus, it can be hard to understand one’s path in life.
Death is ultimately life.
We can never know the state of one’s soul at the moment of death – all we can do is have hope – and PRAY.
While free will is a key factor in determining one’s life, some events are necessary for others to follow (death leading to eternal life; charity towards a neighbor despite harm to oneself ultimately leads to even greater charity in the world).
While some artistic liberty was taken (Jesus knows this girl is an American from the future; the roles of certain figures in the Biblical narratives are expounded and greater connections made amongst them – all of which are SO interesting!) the historical & cultural details are quite accurate and the entire story is, quite frankly, believable.
The writing style is light – this is not heavy literature; older middle schoolers would find this very easy reading and usually very topic-appropriate; most middle schoolers would be able to easily understand it, but for some middle schoolers the topics may not be appropriate. A bit of a spoiler for the sake of choosing the appropriateness for a particular child: the main character loses her father and brother in a car accident; she holds a lot of anger and doubt in God primarily due to the events surrounding this death; there is a physical attraction to the boy next door with which some more innocent middle schoolers will find confusing, with some references to “six-pack” and an incident the main character describes as embarrassing when she enters her bedroom from the shower, and her towel slips before realizing that her bedroom window is wide open. The language is entirely clean and I would read this *with* my own middle schoolers, incorporating discussion, inviting their responses to “what if they were there”, etc.
Sophia Institute Press sent me a complimentary copy of this book for me to review. All opinions expressed in this post are solely my own.
