“…a mesmerizing odyssey through nostalgia,
introspection, and unexpected encounters
that challenge the very meaning of who we are.”
“Despite misgivings, a man returns to his hometown of San Pedro, California, to attend a high school reunion. A former missionary now struggling with his faith, he finds himself in a different kind of struggle courtesy of an uncanny resemblance to Jesus himself as he’s besieged by townspeople and former classmates who variously wish to worship, seduce, or kill him.”
John O’Kane’s The Accidental Jesus is a mesmerizing odyssey through nostalgia, introspection, and unexpected encounters that challenges the very essence of who we are. Join our protagonist as he navigates the blurred lines between memory and reality, faith and doubt, and embarks on a quest that could forever change his life.
Richard Modiano
Director Emeritus, Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center,
Winner of the 2022 Joe Hill Prize for Labor Poetry
John O’Kane’s The Accidental Jesus keeps the action moving at a relentless pace as he pulls the reader deeper and deeper into a rich post-bohemian apocalypse rife with futuristic tech gurus, immovable evangelicals, a cult of modern Mary Magdalenes, and one murderous priest lurking in the shadows.
S.A. Griffin
Author of Pandemic Soul Music
John O’Kane’s The Accidental Jesus got neurons firing in my brain that I’m certain have never fired before. As the protagonist confronts a homicidal fake priest, predator helicopters that seem to hover above him wherever he goes, an orgy in a Catholic church, and a host of otherworldly characters, he wrestles with his sense of what’s real and what’s not. As will the reader…while enjoying every moment of the journey.
Mark Habeeb
Author of Venice Beach
John O’Kane is a novelist, journalist, and publisher. He is the author of eight books: two of literary journalism, three collections of essays, two collections of short stories, and one novel. His essays, articles, and stories have appeared in HuffPost, CounterPunch, Musing the Masses, and The Boston Globe, in addition to various creative and scholarly publications. Possessing a doctorate in literature and a master’s in sociology, he has taught at USC, UCLA, MIT, and UCI. A longtime resident of San Pedro, California, he is the publisher and editor of AMASS Magazine.
Susan M Bayer –
Book Review: The Accidental Jesus
This is an intriguing story that starts, innocently enough, at a Catholic high school reunion. I’ve been to a high school reunion of my own, the twentieth, where I could relate to what he saw of changes in his former classmates. No one’s face matched the name buttons they handed out with our youthful faces smiling right out of the 1967 yearbook.
Things start heating up quickly when one of the attendees remembers Fred, the protagonist, as someone who had a fierce religious bent in high school. She believes he’d gone off to become a priest somewhere in the Midwest. In fact, she insists that Fred looks a lot like Jesus, beard and all.
The mundane setting takes a radical turn when he slips out of the more and more disturbing reunion event—where he doesn’t seem to recognize anyone—and attempts to connect with anyone he might remember out in the strange little town where he went to school. He encounters only strangers who are not what they seem. Women dressed like nuns who are more likely hookers. A man dressed like a priest who pursues him feverishly, threatening to “kill the Jesus freaks!” There are screams in the night, a mysterious helicopter tracking him from above, and then voices from a crowd entreating him to join them.
Fred finds a place to retreat, into a church unlike any other he’d ever encountered. There he lays low until night falls and he intends to slip outside to investigate. The town where he attended school only vaguely resembles the one he recalls. People on the street, the folks haunting the local bar, all weird types. Jesus-freak bikers, a coven (or a whore house), self righteous, insane townsfolk. And everywhere people are comparing our anti-hero to Jesus, or at least a high priest, or some (noting his beard) to Vladimir Lenin.
But where is God/Jesus in this story? Here’s a relevant exchange:
“The earth is where the gods lie… gods are in us and we’re in them.”
“You mean he believes God is dead?”
“No, that he never existed.”
“Then Jesus… was another social worker, a man with a spirit who was on a mission and not a spirit-man living and preaching through distractions.”
The more I proceeded through this story, the more I pictured it as a sci-fi film depicting the end—or beginning—of the world, complete with graphic explosions of the outer and inner mind. I think I can sum it up as follows: Kurt Vonnegut meets St. Augustine at a mysterious Catholic Church in the Twilight Zone.
-Susan Maria Bayer