'MADMAN' In third Christian novel, Groot fails to grasp gospel of good storytelling

By MARY-LIZ SHAW
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
By now Tracy Groot is well settled into a subset of fiction best described as fictionalized Christian myth. The genre first hit its stride with Lew Wallace's "Ben-Hur."
Groot gained a loyal following with her first two books, "The Brother's Keeper," about Christ's brother, James, and its tacit sequel, "Stones of My Accusers," set shortly after the crucifixion.
Her third novel, "Madman," is a fleshing out of the miracle of the Gerasene demoniac, described in the gospels of Mark and Luke.
Compelling basis
Groot, by her own admission, draws heavily on Mark's straightforward account of a man possessed by demons and exiled among the tombs of Gerasenes, a region on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and his disciples encounter the madman after Christ calms a storm that had threatened to capsize their ship. The man identifies himself as "Legion, because we are many."
The demons inside Legion recognize Christ as the agent of their doom and beg to be left to torment the man. Christ refuses. They then ask to be allowed to possess the swine that are feeding in the nearby grasslands. Christ agrees, at which point some 2,000 pigs stampede and then plunge to their deaths in the Sea of Galilee.
Legion, freed of his possession, asks to become a disciple, but Christ tells the man he will serve the Lord better at home -- as proof of God's mercy among those who knew him as a madman.
This compelling story is a worthy rock upon which to build a novel. Had Groot stuck to it, she might have produced a tight narrative.
Unfortunately, she has invented a lengthy, complicated and loosely woven history around the myth of the demoniac, which tapers off in unsatisfying ways.
Strays from topic
The madman, called Kardus, is on the sidelines of a story about a Greek slave, Tallis, who has come to Palestine to investigate what became of his master's Socratic-style academy.
Kardus was a young scholar of the academy and the lover of a fellow scholar, who turns out to be a priestess in the cult of Dionysus.
Groot takes a long detour into the Dionysus thread, beginning with Tallis, whose mother, a Dionysus worshipper, had sacrificed Tallis' 5-year-old brother in a brutal ceremony.
Tallis' original investigation into the abrupt end of the academy soon gives way to his curiosity about the madman. The madman happens to be the brother of the woman, Kes, who keeps the inn where Tallis is staying.
Groot has trouble staying on topic: "Madman" shifts from detective story to love story to psychological drama, to, incredibly, search-and-rescue mission, when a child of whom Kes is guardian disappears on the night of the Dionysian feast.
The narrative twists again, this time returning at last to the question of the madman. Christ restores Kardus' mind, whereupon Kardus becomes a zealot preacher, prompting Tallis to wonder whether a man can be rescued from one kind of possession only to be trapped by another, gentler kind.
This last point is thought-provoking, but Groot drops it as quickly as she does so many of her narrative threads. At each turn, she fails to illuminate each part's significance to her overall theme -- Why an academy? Why did Kardus go mad? Why Dionysus?
Worse, she has a shaky hold of the language, inventing words where perfectly good ones already exist: "Aloneness" for loneliness; "gratefulness" for gratitude; "warmness" for warmth. Her syntax can be overly prosaic: "And it seemed as though a wait had fallen upon the land."
Groot's work probably won't disappoint her Christian audience, which embraced her earlier novels with enthusiasm. But she isn't likely to win new literary converts -- not unless she gets a better grasp of the gospel of good storytelling.