Maggie's Story

by Dandi Daley Mackall

Maggie's Story Maggie Dale is stuck at a dead-end job in a podunk town in rural Ohio. Her life is on the fast lane to nowhere, until a stranger named Joshua comes to town and shows her that she can be a part of something bigger than herself. This contemporary retelling of Mary Magdalene's story will capture young adults ages 14 to 19 looking for a biblical perspective on the character disparaged by The Da Vinci Code .

Genres: Christian Fiction, Young Adult, Teen

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2006

About the author

A professional writer for over 20 years, Dandi Daley Mackall has written dozens of articles for popular magazines and published around 500 books for children and adults alike, with sales of over 4 million.

A frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, she lives in rural Ohio with her husband, three children, horses, dogs, & cats. Awards include the Edgar Award for Best YA Mystery, the Helen Keating Ott Award for Contributions to Children's Literature; Distinguished Alumni Award from Mizzou; ALA Best Book; Christian Children's Book of the Year, Amelia Bloom, Mom's Choice Awards. Her YA novel, My Boyfriends' Dogs, is now a Hallmark movie.

Reviews

[Shania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maggie's Story is an excellent and captivating book. It is a contemporary look at the biblical story of Mary Magdalene. By reading about Christ’s miracles set in modern day made me fully comprehend how miraculous and abnormal all of Christ’s miracles would have been in biblical times. I love how the characters in the book were paralleled with the disciples and followers of Christ. It was enjoyable and a good reminder to me that God can use anyone . This was probably one of the best books I have ever read and I highly recommend it.

[Kristia Seabolt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Maggie’s Story”
by Dandi Daley Mackall
Genre: Christian Contemporary
Publisher: Tyndale House
Stars: ***** five stars!

Onliner Review: “A well portrayed, non-sugar coated, realistic, and modern twist to the story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ.”


First off, this is a lovely book, that my cousin Ashley has let me barrow. Maggie’s Story immediately caught my attention from the pitch. I’ve always wondered how Mary Magdalene thought and lived. I know that this book really doesn’t display the absolute truth, it’s only from one person’s thoughts and perspective on how Mary was. What really caught my full attention was that the time line was brought up to date. As if Jesus’s life didn’t happen two thousand years ago; but, happened now, in this day and age. It gets your mind wondering on how people would take Jesus nowadays, considering all this sin and stuff in this world of today.
It’s refreshing to not think on how it would be yourself, but to read it from someone else’s perspective on how they would think everyone would react to it. When you read this story you find it very likely on how people would act, if Jesus’s era had happened now.
I’ll officially begin my review with the run down by the basic plot.
Anyways, this story wasn’t really based on Jesus, even though he played a huge part in this—actually he was the main part of this story, because he is the main thing of everything. But I’m going to review this book of Mary—I mean Maggie’s perspective of this story. Especially when the book is title “Maggie’s Story”.
I found this story very relatable and realistic, of a modern girl that had earth shattering troubles in her life. Deaths, heart aches, loneliness, sin, depression, suicidal, and abuse. Maggie Dale’s life— as stated in the pitch— was headed nowhere. With a dead end job, abusive no good for nothing—possibly married—boyfriend, and lived in sin day in and day out. Her drug addictions became so bad that it endangered her life, she knew this and did not care. She hated her life and wanted a numbness to the horrors and trials, and if death was on the horizon for her, she would’ve took it. Maggie’s drug addiction was basically the start of her journey to/with Josh.
Josh Davidson is the modern day Jesus Christ of this story. He is well portrayed and modernized through out this story, almost just as good as in the Bible. The story follows along the lines of all the miracles Jesus had done, and gave them a modern twist, but basically the same impression is left, as they had happened in the past. Josh gathered, spoke, performed miracles, and traveled like Jesus had done. Of course, in this book, the time of Jesus hadn’t happened, Josh is the one and only Jesus in this story. Just as if God decided to wait until now to send his son to us. It’s a awesome aspect and thought.
Just think of how it would be if Jesus lived in your time. Picture the chance that you could actually meet him face to face, touch, speak, and witness his glory here on earth.
It gives me chills, just to think of the thought.
But with this concept it makes me think of the scripture. Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." –John 20:29
However, as the story progresses, Maggie grows to love and believe in Josh, with that a new dawn of hope springs into her life. Of course, it takes a few miracles and his words of wisdom for her to cave in and follow him and his disciples. But as she decides to follow Josh, her mind is still at war with herself.
Sound familiar? It does to me, and it speaks to my very core. That I am always at war with myself, even when things are good for me. I don’t necessarily struggle with her type of struggles, but my own doubts and thoughts, can give the same impact that she’s put through in this book. You know that nagging sensation in your mind that gets you thinking? I think everyone has it at some point in their walk with Jesus.
Nevertheless, things are very good for Maggie at this time. She’s traveling all around Ohio with Josh, Pete, Matt, Brad, Bob, Jude, Andy, Tom, Thad, Phil, Nate, and all the rest of the disciples that are modernized. She keeps blaming and hating herself for a past tragedy, dealing with her, her mom, her ex boyfriend Alan, and Chance. The Chance that Maggie writes letters to through out the book, almost as if writing to him is like a diary. Through these letters you can see the growth in her character, if you take notice as you read. Even though, Josh and the Father had forgiven her of her sins. Maggie still had not forgiven herself, in result, making her faith and forgiveness not as strong as it should be, for a period of time.
I, myself, can find this very realistic and relatable the most. Not forgiving yourself and letting the past go. It’s a very hard thing to do.
Also, Maggie finds herself worrying over how people thought of her, even though, Josh had said to not worry about it. As these tiny wars wore on inside Maggie, her trust and faith in Josh isn’t it’s strongest. One day, time, and miracle, she came to her breaking point, and ran away from Josh. Back to her dead end life. She falls back into her old routine, but not as bad as before, because she still believes in Josh, and he keeps her from going back completely into her old habits. Her men habits were ignored and turned down. Her ex boyfriend Ben, did not take that well. But her drug habits came back, not as bad though, and not for long.
Maggie eventually goes back to Josh, when he sends someone for her. The group welcomes her back with open arms and she feels that she is home and belongs with them more than ever. Maggie comes back to Josh just in time to witness the worst of the worst.
The plot follows to Josh’s demise. But not through crucifixion, but an hypodermic needle execution. A different way to go at it, but still the very same impact. Before he is put to death, Maggie gets to talk to him about Chance. Well, she didn’t get to talk to him, he pretty much told her he knew, and he was the only person who knew. Maggie had kept Chance a secret, from fear of what people would think. But he knew. At this very part I was crying, where it was so bittersweet and heart wrenching.
The death of Joshua Davidson, is still just as heart breaking as the real demise of Jesus Christ. It tops your mind with how people would really react to the kindness and goodness of God’s Son sent to save us. I know it was supposed to happen, but it don’t make me feel any less ashamed of how people could be, and had been back in the day. But it was in God’s will, it was supposed to happen for us to have eternal life.
The plot stays true to the events and impact, just as they had done in the past. And is very likely, if Jesus were to live and die in this time, would have came about. And also, how the beloved Mary Magdalene would have lived, thought, and felt. This perspective and concept is exceptional.

The characters, are amazingly written and portrayed.
Maggie’s character is relatable and realistic. Relatable, because her situations in life could very easily happened to a person, it could even be totally completely different approaches, and find yourself in her same position in life. Realistic, because she’s a very true character, that has had reality aspects dealt into her story, that anyone can see their selves or someone they know in it.
Josh is portrayed as Jesus very well in this story, in a realistic, modernized manner. Realistic, with how he reacts like nowadays’ person. Modernized, because he has the modern aura about him, with his slang. It makes you feel comfortable and understand the Son in a better sense, sort of way.
All the other characters has a refreshing, realistic mannerism, about them. I’m only going to name a couple off the top of my head, and leave the rest for you to decipher and read about.
Pete and Andy (Peter and Andrew), are brothers that run a auto repair shop. Pete’s the baseball player that was heading for the majors, but turns them down to follow Josh. Andy is the laid back hard working man, that shuts down the business to go along with his brother and Josh.
Jude (Judas) is the greedy, paparazzi, that is only following Josh to get money and fame and obviously still betrays Josh in the end to the politicians that condemn Him to death.

This story is so refreshing, and has became one of my favorite books! I really recommend this to anyone! It’s such a amazing, inspiring read!

FIVE STARS!

With lots of love, Kristia S.<3<3<3
God Bless<3<3<3
1 Peter 4:10<3<3<3


http://xokristeeauhox.blogspot.com

[Silas Kantor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this once 15 years ago and read it again yesterday because I found it while going through some old books. Read it again for the hell of it and since I have Goodreads now I figured I’d leave a review. This book is written somewhat well. Not terrible, not great. As writing goes it is pretty average. Readable which is more than I can say for a lot of stuff out there, so that got it points in my book. The plot is fine, it’s recycled from the Biblical story of Mary Magdalene so there was technically already a plot written and Mackall didn’t have to do much work there. What I really wanted to touch on was the modernization of Mary Magdalene’s story. For the most part, Mackall did a good job 1:1ing the experiences of Mary Magdalene with modern equivalences. However, I thought Mackall faltered quite a bit when it came to dialogue. Especially Josh’s. I understand that it’s Jesus’s story she’s trying to tell, but if she’s going to modernize it, she needs to modernize the dialogue as well. Most of Josh’s dialogue was lifted exactly from the Bible so it ended up feeling stilted and played, almost stiff, as if he was reading from a script instead of actually speaking like a human being. That took me out of the immersion the entire time, and I could never fully settle into the book as its own story.

I would recommend that Mackall looks at future projects with a critical eye to avoid this problem in the future. The book isn’t bad. It just very much felt like the characters were reading scripts from the Bible rather than being their own characters. I know accuracy to the original material is important, but there are a lot of projects that have done this allegorical dance well so that the original story is obvious while still being its own story and making it easy for readers to lose themselves in it. I think if the dialogue had been modernized as well and I hadn’t just felt like I was reading a reskinned Bible, it would have been a much better book.

That being said, like I said, definitely not bad in the least. But that was the glaring issue for me and since it was throughout the whole book there wasn’t really a time when I could stop being reminded that it was a duplicate of a story from the Bible. Again, not a bad thing — but when you are trying to modernize an already-existing story, you want to modernize it all the way, or else you risk looking like all you did was change the names of places and submit the manuscript.

Other than that, fairly good book. Maggie was well-written, the satellite characters were decently written as well (though there were a few times where they did seem like caricatures of themselves, and Mackall tended to focus on one singular trait of theirs with a few, like Tom; she did quite well with Pete, though, I was impressed, especially with his denial of knowing Josh just before his death), and there were some surprisingly good modernizations of the story such as the lethal injection scene, which brought some new horror to the crucifixion by having the injection go horribly wrong and the administering doctor being so shocked that he was sobbing while watching… those parts were good. I have no doubt that Mackall is a good author, she just needs to work a little more on immersive storytelling while not losing sight of what she’s good at.

Of course, this book is eighteen years old, so this review may be a moot point, as I’m sure Mackall has improved in the nearly twenty years since the book was first developed and since I first read it… but those are my thoughts!

[Katya Mclemore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book. I enjoyed it, but I also think it could have been better. Sometimes I got kind of bored and there would be a constant run on of the same thing. But I also liked this book because even though Maggie went through so much, even when she thought no one could love her, she found someone, and it was Jesus.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Modern day Mary Magdalene

[Belicia Buena-Terrones · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a song I associate with this book because it was on repeat the whole time I was reading this. Its called Running From the Rain by Thursday and its a really beautiful and somewhat sad song just like this book.I really want to take the time to read this again since the last time I read it was about 2 years ago. This is a really heartfelt and religious book. In fact I believe if I remember that there are many parts in it that are tied to the bible. All over its a really good read and I single this book out when thinking of all the books Ive read.

[Yazzy ☠ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A girl with a troubled life looking for solitude, and finding it in a modern day Jesus. I never thought I would have read a novel like this, but as soon as I started reading I could not put this novel down.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It really opened my eyes to what it would have been like if Jesus Christ came to us as a baby and grew up with us in modern times. So sad and wonderful at the same time. And an amazing story from Maggie's (Mary Magdelene's) point of view. 5 stars!!!

[Karina Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom bought me this book a few years back and i found it was very intriguing. Maggie is personally an inspiration. I can't remember much details of it but its a book that definetly sticks out. READ IT!

[Cathy]

was an ok sort of read.... trying to set Jesus in current day is not an easy feat at all.

[Carly W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave an incredible look into the story of Mary Magdeline. The modern twist really helped me understand the story better.

[Melissa (Always Behind) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent contemporary retelling of Jesus' life and ministry from Mary Magdalene's POV.

[Tina Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting idea but the book didn't work for me.

[Nakeba Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

love this book!