Like yin and yang, zealotry and doubt animate this intriguing debut by self-proclaimed "recovering born-again Christian" Kerney, featuring 14-year-old Melanie , a Pentecostal Revivalist (which, according to Mel, "means a lot of jumping up and down, speaking in tongues, and falling over, in that order") who wants to be a "Warrior for Christ"—but who also wants to attend academic summer camp. But the camp's required reading includes the verboten On the Origin of Species
, and Mel, who is a Bible trivia quiz-kid champ, decides to read Darwin in order to disprove him. Alternately precocious and naïve (her discussion of Darwin is deep, yet her world is rocked by the revelation that her parents engaged in premarital sex), Mel is a terrific character: curious, smart and funny. The supporting cast—Mel's obsessive-compulsive, demon-seeing mother; her sexy pastor; and her occasionally repentant older sister who moves back into the house with her out-of-wedlock daughter to escape an abusive boyfriend—is less wonderful. And in the final third, when the family takes a trip to the underground caves of Kentucky and Mel seeks the scientific evidence for her Darwinian investigation, the story advances entirely inside Mel's head. A dark, fantastic finale earns some redemption. (Sept.)
