Best books of 2019

Joan Thomas deservedly won the GG award for her novel Five Wives, based on the true event of five missionaries killed in the Amazon in 1956.  Thomas speaks pitch-perfect Christianese, a delusional language that defies credibility, but which many people still speak today.  Besides the totally unnecessary deaths of the five misguided male missionaries, who follow God’s leading rather than any common sense, the larger tragedy is the collusion between delusional religious people and nefarious oil companies whose invasion of indigenous territories leads to the tragic destruction of a way of life. All of this is presented in readable and powerful fictional form.   Everyone should read this book.