Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres

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 is 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, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, the parents send Julia and David to the Dominican Republic-to a reform school there.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who went to one of these reform schools as a child. It was a tough read and heartbreaking to think these things happened and still do happen.

Jesus Land is the story of a girl, Julia, and her adopted brother, David, a black boy, after her family adopts him from foster care.In the book, Julia tells about their early life together. She describes a very close sibling bond. Once David and Julia move to rural Indiana, with their family, they realize that the world is a lot less of accepting of their relationship. Their family are devout Christians. Their mom and dad believe that sparing the rod will spoil the child. After a series of disasters at home, David and then Julia are shipped off to Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic.

This is a very sad book, though Scheeres tells the story so matter-of-factly that at times I found myself detaching from the story too. When telling the events in the book, Julia never comes across as whining or bathes in self-pity. She never plays the victim, so to speak. She describes herself as "numb" a lot in the book and that's how she writes the story. But she writes in the voice of her 16/17 year old self with flawlessness.

Throughout the book she tells of her almost twin-like bond with David, her adopted brother and the love they had for each other that endured racism, abuse and religious zeal.  The relationship between them is very real and endearing, going through the ups and downs that siblings go through. The relationship is tested repeatedly but they survive it all with the help of one another.

It is heartbreaking to think that a place like Escuela Caribe exists, let alone that there are 3 of them in the world. The fact that these places are still up and running, thriving even, is repulsive. I did a little research on the schools and came across the website http://nhym-alumni.org/ which has accounts from several alumni, I suggest checking it out.

This book is well told and tackles a lot of hard subjects  teenage angst, prejudice, racism, sexual abuse, physical abuse and bad parenting. I highly suggest reading it, if for no other reason than to get a glimpse into a life you couldn't imagine.

4 out of 5 stars.

Buy it here: Jesus Land: A Memoir (See all Memoirs)