Havah: The Story of Eve

The “Christian novel” has been the subject of much derision, including some gentle knocking from yours truly in a previous post.  However, the usual flaws of the “Christian novel” (which include plastic cardboard cutout characters who walk around holding Bible study at every opportunity) are not present in the book presently under consideration.  In fact, I cannot find enough good things to say about Havah: The Story of Eve (B&H Publishing Group, 2010) by Tosca Lee.

Author Tosca Lee

The basis of Ms. Lee’s novel is the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis.  Taking the Biblical narrative seriously, Lee weaves a compelling portrait of what the Garden of Eden must have been like for Adam and Eve (“Havah”) before the first sin was committed.  Her descriptions of life in paradise are imaginative and well conceived.  Ms. Lee’s well written conception of how the world must have changed after the Fall from Grace is some of the best imaginative fiction which I have read in a long time.

 An imaginative photo of author Tosca Lee

In scene after scene, Ms. Lee scores a home run in her narrative which Bible readers will find familiar but also very new.  The reader comes away with the feeling that if the Bible is taken literally this must be very close to what it was really like.

Tosca Lee with the "cowgirl" look

After the initial sin, Adam and Eve begin being repulsed by the killing of animals for clothing and the eating of meat.  As time goes on, however, these things become commonplace.  As their long lives go on, the memories of the Garden of Paradise grow dim.  As their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren become farther removed from God, sin and troubles increase.  And these troubles include disease and natural disasters.  Ms. Lee has brilliantly concocted a story in which the reader is made acutely aware that the world that we live in is not like God intended it to be.

Author Tosca Lee with the "Elvira Mistress of the Dark" look.

I was fascinated that the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Havah is described as a dragon.  This explains how God then changes the Serpent from a creature who walked and flew to a creature that wriggles on the ground.  Although dragons no longer exist, the memory of the dragon stays in the human consciousness to be incorporated into legend and depicted in art.  The dragon is depicted as a creature which was merely the manifestation of the fallen angel Satan.

Ms. Lee also weaves a lot of good theology into her narrative.  The idea is put forward that there is no morality without choice and, therefore, the tempter had to be in the garden of paradise.  Adam and Eve had to be given a choice whether to obey God or rebel, otherwise they had no true free will.  Their bad decision forever binds their descendants and warps the world they live in.

Being written from the first person point of view of the first woman, some will probably describe Havah as "chick lit."  Indeed, with its descriptions of what it is like to be pregnant, this book could probably only have been written by a woman.  In the relationship between Adam and Eve, the novel does have a kind of  "romance novel" feel to it.  However, this is definitely not a Harlequin Romance novel.

According to Wikepedia, the author, Tosca Lee, “was born on December 1969 in Roanoke, Virginia to Sang Moon Lee and Laura Moncrief.  Her father, a first-generation Korean who initially entertained dreams of becoming an opera tenor before he went on to establish himself as a leading academic in the area of business management, named her after his favorite Puccini opera, “Tosca.”  Ms. Lee was the winner of the Mrs. Nebraska beauty pageant for 1996 and a runner up in the Mrs. U.S.A. pageant.  As well as being a writer and a model, she also works for Gallup.  Read an interview with Tosca Lee here.

Ms. Lee is obviously a woman of many faces.

In traditional rabbinic Judaism, Midrash is a storytelling technique that seeks to understand the
Biblical text by telling stories to fill in the gaps left in the Biblical narrative.  It seems to me that this is what Ms. Lee’s novel really is: modern day Midrash.  Havah is a very enlightening and entertaining novel.  Highly recommended.

The mysterious "Girl Next Door" Look (Love the Black Fingernail Polish!)

Tosca Lee as Mrs. Nebraska 1996

The Bad Catholic loves the swim suit competition!

Joel C. Rosenberg's The Twelfth Imam

Joel C. Rosenberg is an Evangelical Christian author who is a former research assistant for Rush Limbaugh and is the head of the Joshua Fund which promotes Evangelical support of Israel. Rosenberg came to prominence as an author when he predicted in one of his novels that Middle Eastern terrorists would use airplanes to attack the United States.

As you probably know, there are two denominations in Islam, Sunni and Shia. Like Protestants and Catholics, Sunnis and Shias have significant theological differences. The majority of the Muslim world is Sunni. Iran is Shia. The Twelfth Imam is about the efforts of Iran to build nuclear warheads and the Shia belief in the return of the Mahdi or Twelfth Imam, who, according to Shia eschatology, will establish Islamic supremacy over the entire world. The main character, David Shirazi, is an American of Iranian descent who is a C.I.A. agent posing as a German telecommunications executive in order to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program.

I wanted to like The Twelfth Imam but author Rosenberg kept doing things to irritate me. As a current affairs briefing, The Twelfth Imam is both interesting and frightening. As a spy novel it’s an entertaining read but nothing special. As a “Christian novel,” The Twelfth Imam exhibits all of the worst aspects of the genre.

I didn’t mind that the Islamic messiah who appears in the book is an agent of Satan and probably the anti-Christ who does all kinds of miraculous things and is a mysterious supernatural figure. I also didn’t mind that Jesus shows up as a character in the novel and makes miraculous appearances to people. I did mind the mindless Evangelical Protestant depiction of Christ.

First of all, in line with Evangelical Protestant theology, all that’s necessary to be a Christian is to believe in the divinity of Christ and start reading the Bible. I found it highly implausible that Christ appears to people who don’t have a Bible and immediately begins demanding that they look up Bible verses.


This book suffers from the much made fun of tendency of “Christian novels” to become a Bible study. Do real people who are in mortal danger sit around and spontaneously begin having a Bible study like Rosenberg’s characters do?

Furthermore, although I am a Christian who believes in conversion and the power of prayer, I find it highly implausible that people who five minutes before were devout Muslims would spontaneously totally abandon all of their previous beliefs, “get saved” like they went forward in a Baptist tent meeting, condemn the Koran as the work of the Devil, and immediately become American style Evangelical Protestants. I also don’t like the implication all through the novel that those who are devout in their religion and believe what they have been taught will die and go straight to Hell because they haven’t “accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior” in the Fundamentalist Protestant fashion. Of course we know that it ain’t just the Muslims who are going to Hell, all of them Catholics, Orthodox and Liberal Protestants are going Hell too for the same reason because none of them are real “Christians.”

Rosenberg should be applauded for his painless briefing on Shia Islamic theology which drives the Islamic Republic of Iran. I suspect that Rosenberg’s depiction of American officials as clueless with regard to the deep religious motivations of Iran’s leadership is largely true. The prospects of a nuclear Iran are truly frightening. As a current affairs briefing, the book is good. As a spy novel, it could have been much better. The book ends with the major plot issues unresolved so that we will all be ready to pluck down another twenty bucks when the next installment is published. As I previously said, as a preachy “Christian novel” which seeks to evangelize, The Twelfth Imam is not entirely awful but is so bad that I almost laughed at it as a parody of the genre.

All in all, on a scale of one to five, The Eclectic Reader gives The Twelfth Imam two and a half Bibles.