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Jesus Land: A Memoir

About the Book

Jesus Land: A Memoir

Sinners go to: Hell. Rightchuss go to: Heaven. The end is neer: Repent. This here is: Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother David. It's the mid-1980s, they're sixteen years old, and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks--and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who's black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother--more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children--and a violent father only compound their problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones, racist brutality, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, their parents' solution is reform school--in the Dominican Republic. In this riveting memoir, first-time author Scheeres takes us with her from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe is nonetheless characterized by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins under boot-camp conditions. Julia and David's striving to make it through is told here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and not an ounce of malice.

Jesus Land: A Memoir
by Julia Scheeres

  • Publication Date: November 1, 2006
  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Counterpoint
  • ISBN-10: 1582433542
  • ISBN-13: 9781582433547