Title: The Visitation
Author: Frank Peretti
Genre: Thriller
Plot: Travis Jordan is a burnt out pastor in the small town of Antioch, Washington. But his town is about to have some strange things happen. The cross with Jesus hanging from it at the Catholic church begins to weep. One of the caretakers goes to clean up the tears and is cured of his arthritis. People start seeing Jesus in the clouds. Brandon Nichols shows up in town performing miracles. The townspeople start calling him Jesus. Soon the newspapers catch wind of these stories. People start pouring into Antioch, curious to see if the stories are true. When, they see the stories are true, they stay. Brandon Nichols gains followers. People see Jesus in every day objects. More people are healed. But Travis Jordan and a few other pastors don’t buy into Brandon’s miracles and story. Travis starts doing some digging. But Brandon and his followers aren’t too happy about that. They try to distract him and win him to their side. When that doesn’t work, the treats start. Who really is Brandon? What will Travis find? Can he help free this town? Or will Brandon take over the town completely?
Rating: 3.6 – a good, slow build thriller
Opinion: This book was super slow at the beginning. I wanted to bang my head against something because this book was so slow at first. Part of the reason is that there’s a lot of backstory in this book. This story also changes perspective a lot. Travis’ story is always in first person and the rest of the perspectives are in third person. So it makes it a little easier to follow, though it took me a minute to understand who was who because of the frequent perspective changes in the first part of the book. Once the story started to get going, it really started going. After the back story and changes in perspectives stopped was when it really started going. After then it focuses more on the plot and moving the story forward. After reading the story, I realized why they did that. It made the characters more understandable so I realized why Travis was the way he was and why he was so different than Brandon. It made me realize how much more real mob mentality is and how easily they can be swayed and persuaded to do or not do certain things. I’d recommend this book for people who like slow building thrillers.
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