Book review: Hometown Prophet

★★★★★

Jeff Fulmer’s “prophet” is a 30-year-old hometown nobody named Peter, who can’t hold a job or find a girlfriend. He lives with his mom. Loser, with a capital L. (Jeff admits in the epilogue that he bears some resemblance to Peter, so I probably just lost a potential friend.)

Peter starts having dreams, and the dreams start coming true. He begins attending church, reading his Bible, sharing his prophecies. The dreams escalate to the level of natural disasters, and while they always come true, Peter begins to wonder when he’ll guess wrong about what they mean. Who’s feeding him these prophecies, anyway? God, or some more malevolent being? The plot’s probably been done before, but Fulmer’s writing grabs you and won’t let go.

Not everyone is that enamored of having a prophet in their midst. While the plot line hangs pretty closely to Peter’s prophetic development and the reaction of the world around him, there’s an underlying theme to the dreams, which can be summed up in a story from the Gospel of Luke: The Good Samaritan. Peter explains in a television interview, “Jesus said it comes down to loving our neighbors as ourselves and loving God with all of our hearts.”

This is Christian literature, and Fulmer’s liberal Christian stance shines, and while I appreciated that, I didn’t find the book the least bit overbearing or preachy. I can’t even really categorize it as controversial, because each of us already knows its truths in the depths of our hearts … whether we admit it or not. It’s more of a feel-good, love-your-neighbor journey. Whoever those neighbors are.

And a fun read.