Last week Dave Long threw down a challenge: read Bad Ground, the second book from Dale Cramer that’s received strong reviews (including being listed as one of Publisher Weekly’s best books of 2004) but isn’t selling well. The book is published by Long’s employer, Bethany House, so there’s an interesting dynamic at work in his challenge (he acknowledges it, but thinks the book is worth the risk).

I finished the book today (too cheap to buy it, it happened to be lying in my pile of reviewer’s copies–without Long’s challenge I never would have cracked the binding) and threw together a quick review. For something you’d find on the shelves of a Christian bookstore, I’m fairly impressed. It could hold its own in Barnes & Noble, though it does have a few weaknesses.

Much of Long’s blog is about making Christian fiction a label that’s said with a little less derision. Bad Ground is a solid step in that direction. I guess it just surprises me that publishing a novel with elements of faith is such a difficult thing. It goes sickeningly to one extreme (in Christian bookstores) or it’s so light it’s lost and condemned. I guess I have some experience with that, but it’s just sad that a good story can’t just be a good story.