There Goes Sunday School, by Alexander C. Eberhart

[Ulysses]

There Goes Sunday School
By Alexander C. Eberhart
Seven Sisters Publishing, 2018
Five stars

“The flowers are in bright contrast to the dark background.”

This line brought tears to my eyes when I read it, and to understand why, you need to read this beautiful novel about a teen boy’s coming out in a conservative Christian community in today’s America. By the time I got to this line, which could seem to be a random bit of description of a hipster coffee shop in Atlanta, Alexander Eberhart’s careful, deft writing had captured me, heart and soul. This is a book where I laughed out loud—when my eyes weren’t burning. There are no accidents here, and Eberhart’s sure hand keeps the narrative moving forward quickly, even as he hooks you with carefully placed lines that draw you back to the unsolvable dilemma that Michael Hernandez faces in his life.

Michael is a half-Mexican sixteen-year-old, the middle child of an affluent family in the outer suburbs of Atlanta’s sprawl. It is clear he is much loved, and his relationship with his parents is warm; but Michael feels his parents’ love is conditional, based on their continued ignorance of his gayness.

As in all YA stories, Mike has two sassy best friends, Jackie and Tanner, who attend both his conservative Christian church and the expensive private Christian academy where they are classmates. Jackie and Tanner are rebels, but they’re also straight, so they can afford to be. Mike loves them, but assumes that they, too, love him back only so far as they are ignorant of who he truly is.

Then Chris Myers enters the scene. The son of Mike’s fire-and-brimstone pastor, he surprises everybody who assumes that the Pastor’s Kid is automatically endowed with a bulletproof faith. As Mike finds himself drawn to this smart, funny, troubled boy, he finds his own carefully-built chamber of secrets threatened. He has no faith in the love of those around him for his gay self.

“There are no happy endings for me, not with Chris, not with anyone. Abominations don’t get those, do they?”

This is not a short book, but it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. The greatest surprise of all is that, in the end, it is Christian love that wins out. Eberhart has given us a book where modern Conservative Christianity’s mistakes are not used as a means to dismiss its fundamental truth: God is love. Eberhart achieves something important and necessary in this book, and he does it with literary flare and emotional maturity.