Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:
Billy
Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in
Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people
are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe
the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what
the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an
environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese
rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course
Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them
how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven
are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing
each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes
to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.
Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking
his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping
people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the
school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry
VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and
Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.
Well, of course, fundamentalists would think that all communists go to hell. But this novel has some surprises: There are souls in hell that you would never have guessed were communists in human life.
Of course, Karl Marx was there.
But also, it turns out that all traditional Native Americans were communists. There were at least five hundred tribes, different from one another in many ways. One of the few things they all had in common was that they held their tribal lands in common, rather than private, ownership. They individually owned tools and houses, but the land belonged to the tribe. This caused a lot of problems when the American government took away tribal lands (for example, the Cherokees, as described in some of Rice’s other novels) and tried to allot acreages to each individual or family. Besides the fact that this gave the whites an excuse to steal unallotted tribal land for themselves, it was also inconceivable to the Natives. That’s how Joe the Cherokee ended up in Hell.
But the Apostle Andrew? In what way was he a communist? You may recall that, at the beginning of the book of Acts, all the Christians were living together “in an upper room,” and they held all things in common (Acts 4:32). This was the pattern that Jesus had established among his followers. As a matter of fact, a couple of the Christians got in big trouble (God killed them) when they held some of their possessions back from common ownership. That’s how Andrew ended up in Hell.
And Pope Francis. He believed the rich should be required to share their wealth (not necessarily all of it) with the poor. I guess that made him a communist.
This is just the beginning of the surprises you will encounter in this novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell.
