Christian Bookworm

Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World by Tom Davis is a work of fiction that explores the AIDS crisis in Africa. It is a story about Stuart Daniels, a photographer who 10 years earlier took a photo that earned him world wide acclaim, but left him with nightmares, a broken marriage and a career in ruins.

With one last chance to redeem his career, Stuart accepts a job that takes him to South Africa, to show how the AIDS crisis has affected the country. What he doesn’t expect is for this job to affect him so profoundly.

While in Africa, Stuart meet Adanna, a young girl of about 12 who is taking care of her sick mother, younger brother and sister. She has suffered much in her short life. Her father, the family’s source of income, disappeared several years ago and has not been seen since. She’s been molested, raped and attacked.  Through it all, she writes in a journal she received as a gift and shares her thoughts and feelings about life.

Tragedy and beauty are the key themes in Scared. Tom Davis does a wonderful job of describing the beauty of the African continent, the animals, the mountains, etc. He also does a wonderful job describing the heartbreaking tragedy that many people, the majority being children, live in on a day to day basis. We in America see and hear the news reports, but after a while I think we become a little immune to it all. There is so much happening in so many places; it’s easy to become numb to it all. For me, even though this was a fiction novel, Tom made the AIDS crisis personal through the story of one village and one girl. 

We see redemption in the life of Stuart, as he once again hears God’s voice and climbs out of the pit he was in, and we hear God’s voice in the words of Adanna, a 12 year old orphan that shared the little food she had left with the children in her village after a devastating flood. “These children are here and they are hungry. Why would I not feed them?”

I felt like I was there in Africa with Stuart while I was reading Scared. I was amazed to see the extravagance of the eating habits of those who could afford to eat in nice restaurants, while outside and a block away people were starving.  Tom Davis really made the AIDS crisis in Africa personal for me, by giving me a face to put with AIDS even if it was a fictional one.  By the time I was finished reading, I was ready to hop on a plane and go take care of those kids.

What would you be willing to give up to feed someone else?