Sons of Thunder

A spiritual thriller which, like a freight train, jerks into immediate motion, thunders into places altogether unexpected, and at last . . . well, who can tell where a fast moving freight might be destined? As for the protagonist, young Virgil Maro, he remains as uncertain about the aid he receives as he is about those who pursue him.

A spiritual thriller which, like a freight train, jerks into immediate motion, thunders into places altogether unexpected, and at last . . . well, who can tell where a fast moving freight might be destined? As for the protagonist, young Virgil Maro, he remains as uncertain about the aid he receives as he is about those who pursue him. And like the great combines that ply the vast grainfields of the American West, Virgil’s plight cuts a broad swath through tracts heavy with a mixed harvest of illusion, suspense, faith, and occasional gleanings from myth’s wild weeds.

I am pleased that I was of a generation that could grow up under the influence of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. My mother included The Hobbit among the stories that she and our father read aloud to us children each evening. Then, behold, innocently enough she also followed the gentle encouragement at the end of the book: “If you are interested in Hobbits you will learn a lot more about them in The Lord of the Rings . . .” The first of those books had only recently been published, but she sleuthed it out, and we unwrapped it as a Christmas present. Then, when she and my father began to read, I too set out with the Fellowship on an adventure unfathomably beyond any I had imagined possible. I was in for a double astonishment, as it turned out; for one day, following my conversion to Christianity in my mid-twenties, I learned that Tolkien was of the faith! Not only that, but there was a sort of brotherhood of Christian writers – the Inklings – with whom he associated there in Oxford. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and one of their pre-Inkling forebears, G. K. Chesterton – these became and have remained among my closest spiritual kinsmen, their writings among those most profoundly affecting my life. In my own way, to the extent of my own abilities, I would like to pass on for others a continuance of this blessing.