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The Rapture of Canaan

sheri reynolds

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Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 1997: Members of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind spend their days and nights serving the Lord and waiting for the Rapture--that moment just before the Second Coming of Christ when the saved will be lifted bodily to heaven and the damned will be left behind to face the thousand years of tribulation on earth. The tribulation, according to Grandpa Herman, founder of Fire and Brimstone, will be an ugly time: "He said that we'd run out of food. That big bugs would chase us around and sting us with their tails . . . He said we'd turn on the faucet in the bathroom and find only blood running out . . . He said evil multitudes would come unto us and cut off our limbs, and that we wouldn't die . . . And then he'd say, 'But you don't have to be left behind. You can go straight to Heaven with all of God's special children if you'll only open your hearts to Jesus . . .'"

Such talk of damnation weighs heavy on the mind of Ninah Huff, the 15-year-old narrator of Sheri Reynolds's second novel, The Rapture of Canaan. To distract her from sinful thoughts about her prayer partner James, Ninah puts pecan shells in her shoes and nettles in her bed. But concentrating on the Passion of Jesus cannot, in the end, deter Ninah and James from their passion for each other, and the consequences prove both tragic and transforming for the entire community.

The Rapture of Canaan is a book about miracles, and in writing it, Reynolds has performed something of a miracle herself. Although the church's beliefs and practices may seem extreme (sleeping in an open grave, mortifying the flesh with barbed wire), its members are complex and profoundly sympathetic as they wrestle with the contradictions of Fire and Brimstone's theology, the temptations of the outside world, and the frailties of the human heart.

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1,1995
Places
south carolina, 

This edition

Format
320 pages, Paperback
Published
April 8, 1997 by Berkley Books
ISBN
9780425162446
ASIN
B007CHTR9O
Language
English

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About the author

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sheri reynolds

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Sheri Reynolds is an author of contemporary Southern fiction.

Sheri Reynolds was born and raised in rural South Carolina. She graduated from Conway High School in 1985, Davidson College in 1989, and Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992.

Her published novels include Bitterroot Landing, The Rapture of Canaan (an Oprah book club selection and New York Times bestseller), A Gracious Plenty (98), Firefly Cloak (06), The Sweet In-Between (08), and The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb (12) and The Tender Grave (21). Her first play, Orabelle's Wheelbarrow, won the Women Playwrights' Initiative playwriting competition for 2005.

Also Professor of English and the Ruth and Perry Morgan Chair of Southern Literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, Sheri teaches creative writing and literature classes. She won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia in 2003. In 2005, she received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts in playwriting. She has also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, The College of William and Mary, and Davidson College.

Sheri lives in the town of Cape Charles on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
31(31%)
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36(36%)
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32(32%)
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99 reviews All reviews
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kansas778
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I just finished reading this book for the second time. I think I loved it more than the first. The only books I tend to give 5 stars to are books that make me want to reinvent my life when they are over, live a better life, and be a better person. This really isn't that kind of book but it is greatness through and through.

There were times while reading this book that I just needed to put it down. I knew if I kept reading I would get too sad. I was right there with Ninah, going through her struggles. I wanted to so badly to reach in and tell her that everything would be okay, that she was doing just fine. I couldn't though. I had to sit back and watch her suffer and wait for James to tell her that she was "doing good".

I don't want to be Ninah or have her life. I do aspire to have her strength to see through the twisted community that there is no escaping from. Like all of us, her life is what it is. She will forever be influenced by it but she has discovered that she can form her own opinions, make her own choices, and she is her own person. It is a lesson that we all need to learn.
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J4rra
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"The eye of a needle is like the gateway to Heaven," Nanna said, "Hard to tell who's going to be on a straight enough path to get through it." But I knew that it took more than being on the straight path. You had to be stiff enough not to bend when you tried to slip through. You had to be careful not to slip to the left or the right and think you were going through the middle all the time.

Having grown up in the Bible belt and attending my fair share of "fire and brimstone" sermons, I could totally relate to Ninah and her internal struggle with God, salvation, fear, and trying to live for herself while not upsetting the delicate balance of the religious community in which she was reared.

I totally loved this book and could not put it down....
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ashketch95
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I love this book, this crazy, beautiful, powerful, terrible, incredible book. I love it, but it makes me ache deep down for this girl and her baby, particularly for her baby, and I want to cry. If it wasn't for that ache - I'd flip back to the first page and start over right this second.

Well conceived, well written, well played - it is perfect.
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Verdisto
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Let's just say this book is very interesting. I couldn't put it down since I just kept wanting to know what twisted thing would happen next!!
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KeiNmari
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A book of fanatical religious zealousness with abuses, torture, and mind control. Well, this can be viewed as that, or this is a story of how an innocent girl tried to emotionally survive in this kind of control.

Rich with symbolism, this story reads quickly and yet has depth and humor. The characters stayed with me long after the book ended. Well Nanna did, while I was deeply rooting for Grandpa Herman’s painful and brutal death.
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StalkerPoetess
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I read this book when I was around 19 or 20. I remember loving it so much. Now, more than 10 years later, I admit that I love it more than I did the first time I picked it up. Ninah's story still resonates with me to this day.

I love, love, love this really sad and wonderful book.

Reread March 21, 2010
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CurryxSake
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This was a really interesting book to read, and I loved that it was through the eyes of a young person, who was being forced to be something she wasn't while all the while defying it all, and becoming her own person anyway. Truly a very good book, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good, simple, but also very deep read.
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