Trevin Wax is a great thinker and writer, and I’m fortunate enough to call him my friend.

Several times a week I get his perspective on a variety of theological issues, trends in evangelicalism, and biblical interpretation.

I’ve read and enjoyed his previous books, Counterfeit Gospels and Holy Subversion, and benefited greatly from both. Given all that is true, however, I was curious to see how he would come out with his latest work, this time of fiction, called Clear Winter Nights. It was over a year ago that Trevin told me that he had an idea for a novel in his heart, and wanted to see if he could flesh it out. Over the course of the last several months, I’ve followed his progression into becoming a fiction writer, observing the differences as he described them between writing something like Clear Winter Nights and his other works. Then, the other day, an advanced copy of the book found its way to my desk, and I ripped through it in an evening.

True, it’s shorter than his other books, but I read it because I wanted to see what happened to the characters. This, in my opinion, is one of the signs you’ve got a good work of fiction on your hands – does the reader actually care what happens to these people? And I did.

Trevin tells a story of a faith journey that has come to an impasse. Chris Walker is about to get married, finish college, and be involved in leading a church plant in his town. He’s also been a professing Christian for the bulk of his life. But due to some life circumstances, he has come to the end of his inherited faith. He has questions – big questions – about the nature of truth, life, and God, and these questions have stalled him out. It is his great moment of doubt, the season when his faith is either going to become his own or lapse into no faith at all. It’s with these questions that he finds himself spending the weekend with his grandfather, the wise family sage and retired preacher. What follows is, as Trevin describes it, “theology in story;” we are the onlookers to the conversation between these two characters who love each other deeply, one rock solid in his belief system, the other teetering on the edge of falling away.

Questions, answers, and conversation. That’s what follows. In truth, if you read Clear Winter Nights, you’d be reading a pretty good resource on apologetics. It’s chalk full of philosophical and thoughtful answers to the biggest dilemmas of faith. You find these two discussing the equality / inequality of all religions, the nature of evangelism, and pain and suffering. The unique part of the book, however, is not the content; it’s the presentation of the content. Even though there is everything above in its pages, Clear Winter Nights delivers these issues not in a heavy-handed kind of way, but rather takes you inside two characters who genuinely love each other. In this story, Trevin shows us that the presentation of truth like this best comes through relationship and trust, and that it’s actually possible to have it be so.

There are two other attributes of the book I found particularly refreshing. First of all, and I don’t want to give away too much here, is the fact that not all of these questions are tied up with a bow. To think that Chris’s questions, if they are indeed as deeply held as we are led to believe, can simply be tied up and answered in a single weekend, would move this book into the realm of idealistic sentimentality. That’s not what happens at all. We aren’t looking at the end of a journey; we are looking at a snapshot of it. A pivotal snapshot to be sure, but not the end. That’s what life in faith is like for all of us I think. Rare is the person who suddenly and fully believes, never to doubt or wonder again. Much more common is a situation like what you’ll read about here: A series of signposts on the journey of faith, each us moving us further and further along by God’s grace.

In addition to that, I also appreciated Trevin’s unashamed declaration that this is indeed “theology in story.” It says so right on the front cover. I remember several years ago when The Shack came out and there was a good deal of controversy in trying to diagnose what the author was or was not trying to say in its pages. One of the defenses of the book was that it was a story, and therefore could not be treated as a strict commentary on life and God. The problem with that approach is that everything, whether we recognize it or not, is really about theology at its core. Every interaction, every response, every question at its core level reveals what we do or do not believe to be true about God. What Trevin has done here is simply dispense with the pleasantries and say, from the outset, that he is teaching through this story.

I commend Clear Winter Nights to you, whether you are a graduating senior who has found himself confronted in the last couple of years with new questions and no answers or whether you know (and you will) you might come in contact with such a person. You’ll be encouraged through its pages. Preorder it here.