James Calvin Schaap's latest book, "paternity", is a collection of short stories that address relationships between fathers (and, implicitly, mothers) and their children - at seasons of life beyond the early nurturing years. These "children" are teens, with all the attendant struggles, or young adults with their own set of dilemmas, so often tainted by those early family dynamics.

Jim Schaap is much more than a courageous and compelling storyteller; he is a truth-teller. He creates life on the pages before us, cuts to the heart of it, and offers us, over and over, an old-new understanding of the varied ways of humanity ... and of God.

Not a "good plot" ... not religion, but Truth.

These are stories from the deep heart of a father. He writes with a simple, gritty, sometimes disturbing eloquence - in a voice that never wavers, for all its hard questioning of the elements of love, and, ultimately, of faith. Perhaps such plain-told tales are particularly relevant today, as we consider our "nation under God."

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"Jim Schaap's characters are so real you can reach out and touch them, his landscapes so convincing you can point them out in your own neighborhood. But what keeps me reading and re-reading Schaap is his marvelous sense of drama - of the strange and familiar ways things happen, of how humans bump up against each other and bump up against themselves. Happiest of all, in experienceing these stories, the reader, time and time again, bumps up against grace."
Joey Horstman teaches English at Bethel College.