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THE TRIAL OF GOD Permission is granted to print and distribute or sell any number of
copies on condition that every copy is accurate and complete and displays this website
address: TheNextCivilization.com
Summary In a village in Central Asia God is put on trial for the murder of a child in an earthquake. In this suspense-filled novel, the plaintiff is the child's mother, the judge is an Asian-Canadian woman, the prosecutor had been a pilgrim to Mecca, the defense attorney is an American corporate lawyer. Village witnesses are joined by expert witnesses representing Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Science... and a "mystery witness," a deserter from the Russian army (and lover of the judge). The international media broadcast God's trial by satellite.
Excerpt (beginning of first chapter) A kilometer southwest of the train the curve of the arid steppe carved a horizon line, like the slash of a scimitar across existence, dividing sky from earth. Walking that line a dozen men and women and children carrying rakes and scythes, and a horse pulling a wagon, trudged from a day's toil in the wheat fields toward a distant mud-walled village. The departed sun illumined the fringe of the Western sky with a vermilion glow that cast the procession, and its smoky trail of rising dust, into silhouette, as if the figures were shadow puppets of an archaic rite. They cast their shadow across Cassandra's sorrow. She wanted to stop the train. She wanted to run across the wasteland from the railroad track to the wagon track. She wanted to halt the procession, to look into each face, to find in that evanescent pageant spirits kindred to her own. Each window of the antique railroad cars had a handle at its top so that passengers could, when the summer sun beat upon their rattling caravan, pull down the glass and feel the rush of wind, tinted and scented with coal smoke, evaporate their sweat. Cassie wanted to pull down the window and shout and wave at the parade of strangers before she was swept from their world. Then she noticed another handle above the window handle. A red handle. The emergency brake. "Yes!" she thought. "It IS an emergency!" …Would a train conductor, a policeman, a border guard, an army officer, believe that a Canadian girl, after traveling half way around the globe to visit her father's birthplace, had to stop the train because she was really traveling toward eternity? Would they understand that eternity is an emergency? They would probably think she was a spy. Well, in a sense, she was.
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