Fiction Friday: The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries

Peter De Vries was an American author best known for unleashing his acerbic wit across the sweeping landscape of American religion. Raised a strict Dutch Calvinist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, De Vries’ lyrics bear the hallmark of authentic, yet good humored self-critique. Strong medicine for the religiously self-serious.

However, in what has become his best known work of fiction, The Blood of the Lamb, De Vries takes the reader on a relentlessly non-comedic re-telling of the biblical Job narrative. Oh yes, we still get his trademark wit, but the power of this story lies not in the lilting melodies of humor, but in the relentless rhythms of suffering.

Like De Vries himself, the main character Don Wanderhope is raised in the strict intellectual tradition of Dutch Reformed Christianity. Tagging along we watch him wrestle with the tensions of life and Calvinism amid an escalating series of trials, culminating in darkest thread of all: death itself. One by one Don’s entire family is taken from him including his brother, his wife, and finally, his closest friend and comrade: his own 11 year-old daughter Carol, stricken with Leukemia. Don discovers new shades of pain as he’s forced to witnesses the slow and agonizing death of his beloved little girl. Like Job, the twist of Don’s transformation is that he doesn’t find quite what he’s looking for from his faith – but he does find something. Like Job, Don wants the kind of answers that bring comfort and consolation to alleviate a crushing burden of existential anger, but what he finds instead is a deeply embedded, throbbing form of compassion in its place.

Unlike Job there is no blessed ending, no “double portion” to replace his brother, his wife, or his cherished daughter. Yet there is, in an unexpected moment of heart-rending relief toward the end, a surprising movement of enduring beauty in this otherwise melancholy song.

What makes this story especially weighty is that it is Peter De Vries’ story. Carol was his 11 year-old daughter masked in another name, embedded in the story of a man that is more than fiction. It is a testimony to the power of literature that an author like De Vries can tell more of the truth by cloaking it in fictional places and names, and that we can find our own stories across the pages of such a dark myth. It is a testimony to the power of narrative truth when the story reads us more than we read it. There were long stretches of pages when I was Don, the Christian father of beloved daughters, learning much to my own terror that I am more frightened of death than I realized, and more indignant toward God than I’m comfortable to admit.

The Blood of the Lamb is not for the faint of heart, but for the brave and adventurous willing to stick with Don through these horrors the real blessing may be found in identifying with a remarkable shift from innocent naivete to sober surrender – and a fresh, realistic, if not bracing faith that somehow survives a brutal pruning process.

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