Off-Road to Damascus

Bryce has been trained to explain what faith asks of people. He is less prepared for what people will ask of him.

With a seminary degree and bills to pay, he goes to work for Barry, a traveling Baptist preacher determined to put troubled churches back in order. Barry has strong convictions, a program of restoration, and a passion for dirt bikes. Bryce has a sharp eye for the enterprise's absurdities, and a salary that depends on helping it along.

In the small communities where they work, life keeps exceeding the instructions. Two old mechanics repair cars for people who need them. An overworked pastor keeps answering calls. Congregations that appear inefficient from a distance are held together by friendships, habits, and obligations that no visiting expert fully understands.

As Bryce becomes involved in these lives, the distance from which he has judged them begins to disappear. Working with his hands teaches him the demands of being useful. Grief unsettles answers he once considered sufficient. Friendship and the possibility of love ask him to risk more than an opinion. The failures he can so readily recognize in others become harder to separate from his own compromises.

Off-Road to Damascus is a comic literary novel about a young man's passage from the head to the hands and heart. With irreverent humor and affection for the people who keep communities alive, Aaron Summers explores faith, authority, and the work of loving people whose lives we cannot put in order.