This should have been a remarkable story. It should have been a story about a preacher speaking the word of God and seeing a beautiful man in the crowd, a man who saw him in turn and felt the love of God and flesh as one. It should have been about the following of the preacher, the mass exodus from civilisation to Cana, and it's establishment. It should have been about these two men fighting their desires and attractions and ultimately realising their love is not damned by God but given by him, leading to the one night where Nathaniel was with both Arthur and his wife, resulting in the miracle of Ezekiel, the boy with two fathers. A miracle! What a great, dynamic, compelling story that would be!

And maybe it was about that, but we only heard those parts in flashbacks and footnotes. Everything that was on the page was rendered almost meaningless by how interstitial it was in comparison to the things that happened during the MASSIVE time skips
Between chapters. The things we do see are shades of what we don't, leaving a sense of frustration and oftentimes even some confusion. What a bizarre way of writing a story. All tell, no show. All gums, no teeth. I can't say all sizzle no steak because there wasn't even sizzle.

Nathaniel is a weak character- not because of his actions or lack thereof, which is a fact important to the story, but because he doesn't seem particularly invested in or even affected by the narrative his actions have set in motion, though not in any way that appears as an intentional choice on the writer's part. It's a shortcoming, not a choice, and it makes the reader feel like Nathaniel doesn't belong in this story sometimes, like he's a stranger who just wandered in. And then there's Arthur's optimism about the acceptance of queerness, which, while inspiring, borders on anachronism at times, making it feel like he too is from a different story or even a different time period altogether. In fact, most of the characters are going through their own things, which I know is normal, but to this extent and in this way it leads to a story that goes nowhere with characters who aren't really connected in any meaningful way at all.

All of this is quite unfortunate, because the prose and writing style itself is actually quite beautiful! Despite the fact that nothing really seemed to be happening, the words ebbed and flowed and carried me along so pleasantly. I just wish it had been *for* something, instead of what it was, which was an empty husk full of beautiful words whuch were disconnected from the people they were talking about. It was a book that left me not hating it, but just with a deep sense of disappointment for what it actually could have been if the author hadn't, for some reason, focussed on all the wrong things.