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The Last Year of the War
In this haunting novel, a young student at a midwestern Bible college ascends from the dark night of her soul into the light of God's love. The time is 1944; World War II is the external symbol of her inner struggle. No reader will be unmoved by this powerful and original contribution to Christian literature.
255 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 3, 2014
Stellar writing style, and a story that former Fundamentalists will identify with. There is no outright abuse as we former fundies have come to discuss abuse: no child or teenager is beaten in this book in the style of the Roloff-type homes, no young person is sexually molested by a pastor (in the style of dozens of IFB churches), no resident of a "boarding school" is made to do slave labor (as in Hephzibah House). But the manipulation is there, the cold indifference that hides behind Biblical platitudes, and the troubles, secrets, and selfishness are all there. The main character enrolls in a thinly disguised Moody Bible College. She meets all the weirdos and manipulators we all met. She experiences some of the "spiritual highs" that some of us have experienced.
This book made me think through some of the stuff that happened to me and that I witnessed at BJU. Maybe all Christian colleges are doomed to these same details. The reader will have to work that out. But the writing style is lucid and well paced. The book is a quick read, but not an easy read. But I consider it very worthwhile.
This book may merit only four stars because the ending is sewn up a little too tightly, and it's a little too bleak to be entirely believable. But the level of the writing and the nature of the book itself prompted me to give it five stars.
This book made me think through some of the stuff that happened to me and that I witnessed at BJU. Maybe all Christian colleges are doomed to these same details. The reader will have to work that out. But the writing style is lucid and well paced. The book is a quick read, but not an easy read. But I consider it very worthwhile.
This book may merit only four stars because the ending is sewn up a little too tightly, and it's a little too bleak to be entirely believable. But the level of the writing and the nature of the book itself prompted me to give it five stars.
November 16, 2010
Enjoyed the first half a lot more than the second, which was disappointing.
February 11, 2008
Good book. Kinda rare novel, about a girl who goes to a popular evangelical college and has some of the roughest most alienating times in her life there.
March 9, 2025
Just finished Shirley Nelson’s *The Last Year of the War*. It’s a novel about a born-again teenager who defies her atheist father by attending Calvary Bible Institute (a barely disguised Moody Bible Institute) in the last year of World War II. I mean, you can read about fundamentalist doctrine and politics until you’re blue in the face, but if you want to know what it felt like to be a young woman in this subculture, this should be on your reading list. I couldn’t put this compassionate and searing book down.
On the moment of conversion: “It was all so new, Jo couldn’t think who she meant by ‘he,’ and then she was the word as ‘He,’ with a recognition so disturbing and comforting that the force of Yooney’s words was like a shade snapped up on a window, and she looked out into an idea that held clearly for only a second: that real life was something else altogether than she had thought, and the world’s thermometers and measuring sticks were desperately wrong. She felt wretchedly small and wholly important, all at the same instant. Then it was gone, as if it were too much for a human mind to retain. ‘I know why I’m alive,’ she wrote to Gloria.”
On Bible school romance: “He had a square, sober face topped by a dark, wispy crewcut. He might be called good-looking if it were not for an excess of cheek. Too much face, Jo thought. Or his mouth was too small. His lips seemed wet, and a drop of water hung from the end of his nose. On the writing arm of the chair lay a handful of crumpled tracts he was smoothing and rubbing with a handkerchief.” . . . “He thrust his hand forward, fingers spread and she took it limply. ‘Jo Fuller,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Corporal Clyde McQuade! Honorable discharge, U.S. Army.’ The drop fell from his nose and hit Jo on the back of the hand like a wet kiss, sealing them together in some intimate and undesirable alliance.”
On the moment of conversion: “It was all so new, Jo couldn’t think who she meant by ‘he,’ and then she was the word as ‘He,’ with a recognition so disturbing and comforting that the force of Yooney’s words was like a shade snapped up on a window, and she looked out into an idea that held clearly for only a second: that real life was something else altogether than she had thought, and the world’s thermometers and measuring sticks were desperately wrong. She felt wretchedly small and wholly important, all at the same instant. Then it was gone, as if it were too much for a human mind to retain. ‘I know why I’m alive,’ she wrote to Gloria.”
On Bible school romance: “He had a square, sober face topped by a dark, wispy crewcut. He might be called good-looking if it were not for an excess of cheek. Too much face, Jo thought. Or his mouth was too small. His lips seemed wet, and a drop of water hung from the end of his nose. On the writing arm of the chair lay a handful of crumpled tracts he was smoothing and rubbing with a handkerchief.” . . . “He thrust his hand forward, fingers spread and she took it limply. ‘Jo Fuller,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Corporal Clyde McQuade! Honorable discharge, U.S. Army.’ The drop fell from his nose and hit Jo on the back of the hand like a wet kiss, sealing them together in some intimate and undesirable alliance.”
June 9, 2019
The strength of this novel is its faithful record of time, place, and subculture: an evangelical Bible college during the waning months of 1944. Readers of a certain age and religious background will effortlessly recall half-forgotten sounds and images, many of which would strike their 21st century grandchildren as odd, perhaps even alien: old evangelical buzzwords and shibboleths, Flannelgraph stories, Sallman’s head of Christ, Sunday school attendance pins, snatches of once popular gospel choruses.
Although Last Year of the War is by no means a feminist novel, the viewpoint is that of the women’s dorms. Except for one older faculty member, male characters are clueless, hypocritical, intellectually arrogant, and/or downright loony. (Perhaps as an antidote, one should read The Journals of Jim Elliot, published in 1978—the same year as the novel—and with early chapters written at Wheaton College in 1948.) Although to me the novel’s conclusion is baffling, I willingly suspend disbelief out of respect for a fine painter of what is now truly a historical scene.
Although Last Year of the War is by no means a feminist novel, the viewpoint is that of the women’s dorms. Except for one older faculty member, male characters are clueless, hypocritical, intellectually arrogant, and/or downright loony. (Perhaps as an antidote, one should read The Journals of Jim Elliot, published in 1978—the same year as the novel—and with early chapters written at Wheaton College in 1948.) Although to me the novel’s conclusion is baffling, I willingly suspend disbelief out of respect for a fine painter of what is now truly a historical scene.
September 22, 2021
I read this many years ago, but I still remember how powerful and important it was for me to read, as a person coming out of an Evangelical college experience. I remember too, at the time, my husband was trying to write a screenplay for it! Still waiting for the movie...
October 9, 2011
I read this book way back in the early 1980's when I myself was starting out writing my own novel of life at an evangelical college. This book was a game-changer for me. I love the realism and the way Nelson gets inside her main characters. This book will challenge any reader who has grown up in a conservative Christian culture.
June 11, 2008
Loved this book. Cathartic for me.
September 30, 2015
This book was different...a story about a girl at Moody in Chicago.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews