Ezekiel's Shadow by David Ryan Long

First published: Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 2001

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Thriller/suspense

Core issue(s): Conversion; faith; regeneration

Principal characters

• Ian Merchant, the protagonist, a novelist
• Rebecca Merchant, Ian’s wife
• Mike Oakley, a detective
• Pete Ray, Ian’s friend and member of his writing group and church
• Louis Kael, Ian’s editor at his publishing house
• Howard Kepler, Ian’s friend and spiritual mentor

Overview

Ezekiel’s Shadow, the first novel by David Ryan Long, an acquisitions editor at Christian books publisher Bethany House, won the 2001 Christy Award for best first novel. The book tells the story of Ian Merchant, a famous horror novelist who is in many respects reminiscent of popular writer Stephen King. Ian lives with his wife, Rebecca, in the small, touristy town of Titansburg, Connecticut. Although they have lived in the town for a while, they have established relatively few local connections. Ian’s books have been on the best-seller list for several years, but Ian finds that he has writer’s block and is unable to continue writing. At the core of his writer’s block is his conversion to Christianity on a camping trip three months earlier. Rebecca has her own writing problems: She is trying to complete her master’s thesis in history but has lost interest in her idea about the American Civil War.

As the novel progresses, the reader slowly learns that Ian had reached a sort of turning point in both his spiritual and his creative life several months earlier. After he wrote a particularly dark and horrific novel, he began to feel that life held no meaning for him. He found a particularly haunting black-and-white photograph of a skeletal rib cage partly covered by shifting desert sands, and while investigating the photograph, he met the photographer, Howard Kepler. During a long camping trip, with Howard’s help, Ian sought and accepted Christ. Ian was baptized in the desert, almost drowning in a flooded wash. In the months since, he has been trying hard to get back into his life as a writer.

To deal with his writer’s block, Ian joins a writer’s group that he stumbles across in a local coffee shop. At some level, for Ian—a professional writer with many published novels—joining the group seems to be a step back, but he realizes that both professionally and personally, he feels isolated and cut off. One of the men, Pete Ray, the owner of a camping goods store, becomes particularly important to Ian. Pete is an open and unabashed Christian who invites Ian to his church, which meets in a local school gymnasium.

Just as Ian starts to find some comfort in the new directions his life is taking, everything changes: First he hears someone scratch at his garage door, and then someone begins leaving strange notes with particularly scary quotations from his novels at his house, in his car, and other places. He begins to receive strange messages on his answering machine. Initially, Ian and the police feel that the stalker must be a deranged and obsessive fan. Ian slowly fosters a friendship with Detective Mike Oakley, who works with Ian to find and stop the stalker. Oakley and his wife are undergoing their own trauma in that Oakley’s mother-in-law is dying of Alzheimer’s disease.

Soon Ian is able to write again; he starts both a horror novel and, at his editor Louis’s request, a memoir detailing the events of the stalking. Eventually, though, Ian loses interest in both books and instead begins writing about his discovery of faith in the desert back in April. At the same time, Rebecca has found a suitable subject for her thesis. She has become interested in the work of local sculptress Katherine Jacoby, who has recently died. Among many other works, Jacoby created sculptures of everyday things (such as books, roses, and food) that look so realistic that casual observers do not realize they are sculptures. Rebecca finds proof that although Jacoby had been raised for a time by German Jews, her father was a Nazi. Eventually Jacoby used her art to pave the way for her own conversion and salvation. In a way, Jacoby serves to mirror Ian. Jacoby’s art contained a greater reality, and Ian feels he must write books that reveal his change of life and his faith. Rebecca finds inspiration from both Ian and Jacoby; she decides to dedicate her life anew to Christ and is baptized in the pool at the gymnasium that hosts Pete’s church.

The stalker, in a sense, signifies Ian’s past. Not only did Ian’s horror novels prey on human fear and anxiety, but also Ian himself was easily angered, wrathful, and at times even vindictive. At his publisher’s request, he had played the part of the strange and scary writer. Ian finds, though, that despite his change of heart, the world has such an entrenched view of him (as shown by muckraking entertainment reporter Kyle Turner), that it refuses to accept his change. Even his first attendance at Pete’s church ends with a member of the congregation grousing about the hypocrisy of his attending church.

Christian Themes

Christian themes abound in Ezekiel’s Shadow, the most prominent being the story of the newly converted Christian. Ian had been not only a nonreligious person but also a symbol of anarchy and fear. His family name, Merchant, indicates that before his salvation, he was someone who did not mind trafficking in suffering (even of a fictional sort) to make money; at another level, the name suggests that Ian was selling himself short. As someone who has found a new life, he must work to ensure that his new view of the world is demonstrated in his actions and work.

The novel has a motif of lost fathers. Ian, like Detective Oakley, lost his father when he was a small boy. Howard Kepler becomes Ian’s surrogate father, but he dies. In each case, the point is clear: The Father that Ian must look to is not a biological or surrogate father, an actual man, but the Creator.

Perhaps the most important Christian theme in the novel is revealed through its title and the photograph Howard took of the rib cage in the desert. Howard had been working on a photographic version of the Bible, in which a telling photo would represent each significant verse. The half-buried rib cage is meant to indicate the famous thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, when God shows the prophet Ezekiel a valley of bones. Even as Ezekiel watches, the bones are covered in flesh and the skeletons become living people, symbolizing the eventual rebirth of Israel and the rebirth of those who are spiritually dead but find the Lord.

In Ian’s case, the desert symbolizes his own spiritual life. In his last and bleakest horror novel, Ian described how evil was ultimate and could go unpunished and declared that nothing in life had any meaning. After writing the book, he realized instead that life had to have meaning—but he had no idea what that meaning was. When Ian found Howard, the photographer of the half-buried rib cage, he asked how Howard could create such a horrific image. Howard responds that the photograph is a symbol for hope, not horror, as it shows that while there may be suffering, there will never truly be horror because humans have everlasting souls, saved by Christ, that will never be tied down to mere bones.

Sources for Further Study

Bertrand, J. Mark. “The End of Horror: Analyzing Ezekiel’s Shadow.” http://www .jmarkbertrand.com. A thorough and in-depth analysis of the novel’s Christian themes.

Duncan, Melanie C. Review of Ezekiel’s Shadow. Library Journal 126, no. 2 (February 1, 2001): 79. A short review that takes an analytical approach, explicating many of the novel’s Christian themes.

Steinberg, Sybil S. Review of Ezekiel’s Shadow. Publishers Weekly 247, no. 48 (November 27, 2000): 50-51. A short review that focuses on the novel’s more suspenseful elements rather than the book’s Christian themes.