We're told that this candidate is "nothing like the Jesus you always had in your imagination." He prefers to be called "Hay-Zeus" and not "Lord." Disdaining public displays of godlike power, he confirms his identity to a ragtag group of followers through a series of private miracles. In one, he restores life to a toddler who has fallen from a third-story fire escape. In another, his touch heals a dying girl, and her grateful super-rich parents bankroll his campaign.
The novel's narrator, Russ, is initially cynical in the face of these events. A TV reporter in "the troubled city of West Zenith," Mass., he does not believe in miracles, but Jesus' charisma and his inside knowledge of Russ's most private behavior are convincing. Russ abruptly quits his job to join the Divinity Party campaign, and Jesus names him chief of candidate security. He is responsible for "keeping God alive." This duty expands exponentially when Jesus also asks him to keep a journal about the campaign. This journal becomes the novel, which becomes Russ's version of a 21st-century New Testament.
Clearly this is not a typical political novel. There is no billionaire cabal, no terrorist, and no Manchurian candidate. Instead, Jesus' opponents are stick figures. The Republican is a woman, a "hardass senator from Idaho" married to a "famous TV preacher" who exerts huge influence among far-right Christian conservatives. The Democrat, while "only a colonel," is a war hero who made his considerable fortune by inventing an insecticide that kills bugs and not people. John McCain meets Al Gore.
Jesus is irresistible. He is a "renaissance man," a rodeo bull rider, a West Coast surfer, an Elvis imitator. He loves doughnuts and feeds his staff Indian food. As his campaign travels from small town to small town, children flock to him because he is a "combination of Barney, an Action-Figure, and the lead singer from the Wiggles." Demonstrators and doubters from the right and the left, red states and blue, fall to their knees in his presence. Occasionally one faints. His choice of a running mate is a sweet surprise that will not be spoiled here.
