By That Sin Fell The Angels

By That Sin Fell The Angles

by Jamie Fessenden

           Paperback: 210 pages

            Publisher: Itineris Press (August 29, 2012)

            Language: English

            ISBN-10: 1613726996

              ISBN-13: 978-1613726990

This was an unusual book for me. Not because the topics of gay teens coming (or not coming), to terms with their sexuality, or self-loathing, or religious self-righteous bigotry, or mass hysteria and false labeling of gays as sexual predators, or teen suicide. All of these have been explored and dissected elsewhere in non-fiction and fiction. What struck me from the beginning was the sense of balance, the yin-yang, Jamie Fessenden strikes in By That Sin Fell The Angels.

The setting is a small New England town. The kind represented in movies where the lens is softly focused and where everyone knows everyone—smiles all around you.

The story begins with Daniel, the only son of Isaac, a Christian fundamentalist preacher, committing suicide in a way that is startling, and dramatic.

Schooled from boyhood in the Bible by his father, Daniel is devoutly Christian, and gay. From this dynamic flow two powerful, and seemingly irreconcilable forces. Forces that Daniel could not resist, so he ended them by killing himself in the very sanctuary of his church.

The chief theme in this story is Isaac the preacher coming to terms with his God, and his understanding of that God. Yet there’s lots going on in By That Sin Fell The Angels, however, Jamie Fessenden focuses not on the infectious bigotry pastor Isaac himself spreads among his flock, nor the triumph of the town’s acceptance of a gay teacher, but rather pastor Isaac’s wrenching journey of a soul in distress toward understanding that we are all fearfully and wonderfully created.  From Daniel’s suicide, to the outing of his school teacher, as well as Jonah, another boy in the school, and of Eric, a boy who is very much out and about as a gay teen, Jamie Fessenden weaves a coat of many colors. 

Mr. Fessenden has written a book of deep understanding. As I read this, I got the sense that he has on some level experienced some of what he has expressed so well.