The Naked Earth

Jonathan Adam DeCoteau
Crystal Dreams Publishing (2008)
ISBN 9781591461227
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (7/08)


Award-winning author Jonathan Adam DeCoteau explores the inner conflicts of photojournalist Evan Al-Mohummad in this bold contemporary novel. Evan “Sindbad” has been assigned by the American military to investigate a bizarre double murder in Basra, Iraq.

Sindbad uncovers the beginnings of genocide, known and ignored by Western governments. Threats on Sindbad’s life came from all directions. The environment surrounding Basra was described this way: “These were men who had lost the impossible war, men who no longer believed in words like democracy, but in sulfur and gun powder, in the violence of life they could fit in the palms of their hands.”  Thwarted from every side, Sindbad is determined to tell the story in a desperate effort to bring about justice.
 
DeCoteau captures the pathos and pain of the injustice and hatred that accompany the atrocities of war.  Jonathan writes of the horror of war using the form and language of poetic prose. He instills a haunting reminder in the mind of the reader of the devastation, suffering, and the nightmares of war: of random bombings, smoke lacing the air, and of total chaos.

I could almost feel the deep bitterness of hatred, the fear and paranoia of suspicion depicted in the emotions of the suicide bombers and of their victims. “They were family men caught in politics like a dying desert mouse caught by a vulture.  Most had never held a gun.”

Sindbad’s investigation further revealed that Basra’s underworld gangsters were involved in a conspiracy to annihilate his family’s ancestral home, Janni-Ri.  He vows revenge.

DeCoteau’s graphic descriptions leave the reader with an indelible image of Sindbad’s violent and brutal act of revenge and murder of another murderer, a nine-year-old man…child, Sameh. Back in America, crazed and guilt-stricken Sindbad faces his conscience. A quest for self-discovery leads him on an odyssey that takes him back to his ancestral home Janni-Ri to find peace and redemption. Here he finally finds freedom from prejudice, from war, from oppression, and degradation.

The stench of death in the streets, the sound of gunfire, and the extremes of human nature are smelled, heard, and felt in this outstanding portrayal of war in the land of Iraq and its peoples.

Jonathan Adam DeCoteau has raised the bar to a new level in this exciting genre of international adventure novels, centered on the Middle East. “The Naked Earth” is brilliant, soul-searching, and relevant.

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