A Review of Asa James by Jodi Lew-Smith
(Virginia Beach, VA: köehlerbooks, 2025). ISBN: 979-8-88824-930-7 Asa James is a beautifully written, poetic novel rendered in the tone of the time of which it talks. It’s cinematic and evocative, like the great English classics that have endured through time. Supporting and enhancing the text are illustrations of flora and fauna in the part and chapter titles. As we’d expect, the Prologue begins on a proverbial dark and windy New England night in late autumn 1851. Sister Ruth, who co-runs the local poor farm (which services unwed mothers and orphans), finds a baby in a shack in the woods beneath its dead mother. Rats have gotten at the baby’s face… Chapter 1 jumps 24 years, and the baby, our titular character, is now grown into a restless young man with dreams of being a naturalist like Darwin. Asa’s stumbling onto a secret is the novel’s inciting incident; the hero’s call to adventure. Now a stranger in a strange land—economically and socially rather than geographica...
