The Bible Salesman
Clyde Edgarton

This pleasant book evokes a simpler time in the South, spanning the late 1930s to the early 1950s. In a way, it's a song of praise to the virtues of innocence and ignorance before we were all corrupted by too much knowledge and infected by cynicism.
Henry, a young man who has been brought up by his aunt and two uncles after his father died and mother abandoned him, is trying to make his way in a world he barely understands. His idea is to send away to churches for free Bibles and then sell them to unsuspecting housewives in the Carolinas and Georgia. Henry is not a saint -- but he has an undeniable goodness and sweetness about him and these provide his armor in a world less friendly than he imagines.
Henry falls in with a car thief who tells him he's working for the FBI breaking up criminal gangs. Yes, Henry falls for this incredible story and becomes an accomplice.
The author has effortlessly taken us back to a time which may have only existed in his own imagination, where folks are polite, well-intentioned, God-fearing and charitable. In his version of the South, there's no racial prejudice -- in fact no African Americans at all.
Henry is trying to figure out some of the contradictions in the Bible. Why are there two versions of the creation story in Genesis? What is original sin? Is there really a heaven? He's a sweet and endearing creation himself -- you can't help rooting for him.
Henry meets Marlee, a girl selling fresh produce at a fruit stand, and the two embark on one of the loveliest, most innocent love affairs I've read for years. Truly, they are like Adam and Eve in the Garden.
The various plot strands are eventually rather clumsily resolved -- but this is scarcely the point. We're left with an image of enduring goodness. Truly, ignorance is bliss, the author suggests. Eat from the Tree of Knowledge and misery will result.
So we leave our hero and heroine on their honeymoon, blissfully contemplating the sea, the moon and the stars, asking unaswerable questions about the nature of existence, content they will never know the answers. It's a lovely fantasy -- and a sweet excape from reality.