Eight-year-old Charles Thomas has a mission: He's lookin' to find Jesus on Johnsontown, a tiny, fast-eroding Chesapeake island that's home to 400-plus souls. He's been hearing about Jesus forever, but it wasn't until that Visitin' Preacher came to the New Believers' Church on Father's Day that Charles Thomas thought he might could find Him right there on the island, just the way that Visitin' Preacher said. Livin' right among them. It made sense to Charles Thomas since all the people he knew talked about knowin' Jesus the way they talked about knowing their neighbors, so Charles Thomas figured, if Jesus lived among them, it had to be one of the people he knew. If he could find Him, maybe his Lord and Savior could perform a miracle or two for him, and God knew Charles Thomas could use a miracle. For starters, He could fix up his broke arm, and if he could do that, maybe He could even bring back his father. Inspired by an intimate knowledge of the people on isolated Tangier Island, VA, Fortenbaugh has conceived a tale of the innocence and sustaining power of hope despite the challenges that the people of Johnsontown face - discouragement and the failing economics of the rural working class, wresting a living from a beleaguered Bay, the loss of regional micro-dialects, traditions, and the cultures they reflect, all colored by conflicts of race, class, and identity. These challenges have been a part of our nation from its beginnings, yet all are surging in these turbulent times of tremendous change and the inevitable backlash that always accompanies such change.
"I feel," author Pete Fortenbaugh says, "that Johnsontown is a perfect petri dish to explore the complex dynamics of small community life in the face of an ever-changing world."
The rich cast of characters is fully realized, from kind, steady Uncle Furry, who relies on The Lord to guide him and is convinced that climate change is bunk, to Calhoon Greenhawk and his sometime girlfriend Marsha, who is called 'whore' by the island's church women as casually as hanging out laundry, to black Mr. Abe Johnson, the island's librarian and only accountant, whose grown son, Rodney, has the mind of a five-year-old.
Charles Thomas's more personal struggle to find Jesus and apply to Him for specific cures for what ails his own life is poignant, funny, wry and ultimately a parable for our times.