Book Reviews
The Church
Chronicles of
Iris and Locke
Review by DiAnne Malone
T
he book doesn’t mean to make you
dream. It doesn’t mean to ramp up
your cravings for sweet tea and gourmet teacakes. The book doesn’t really mean
to make you want to renovate your ENTIRE
house so that you’ll have a front porch. No.
This is not the intent of The Church Chronicles of Iris and Locke.
Yet somehow, it does just that. The
series pulls you in. The words are a lullaby you
never want to stop hearing. The images jump
off the page and spring up around you as you
read. Now, is that what you really want?
The Church Chronicles of Iris and Locke
is a series of novellas that take to the task of
producing a different kind of Christian fiction,
the kind that lets the Christian reader (dare we
say) laugh—at the characters and in essence
laugh at themselves. It is intelligent, well-written, complex prose that is communicated
simply and chocked full of layered meanings.
The characters in Sweet Fields, GA are
a flawed group of brothers and sisters who try
to work through their issues the best way they
can—sometimes privately, most times publicly.
30 HimPower May 2015
They are self-aware. They are proud. They
are smart. They are beautiful and imperfect
in every way. You walk away from each chapter in the series reflecting on how the world
keeps spinning even after the doors of the
church have been opened and closed.
So what’s the point? The authors of
The Church Chronicles of Iris and Locke want
readers to see that Christians are human (and
humorous, too). Jackie Black, the svelte villainess in the first series, is in some ways, despicable, and yet readers find themselves feeling