“The set-up for American Savior sounds like the answer to a satirist’s prayer,” The Washington Post reckoned in its review of this novel by Roland Merullo: Jesus returns to earth to run for the presidency of the USA! As indiebound.org explains, “the Son of Man sets out to make everyone realize that ‘politics as usual’ is no longer…acceptable.” Jesus’ platform makes that clear: “I’m running,” he declares, “on the Beatitudes.” It’s as betterworldbooks.com observes, “we finally have an answer to the long-simmering question, ‘What would Jesus do?’”

Merullo’s “bitingly clever satirical” book about the state of American politics, indiebound.com affirms is “a remarkably innovative novel that challenges our perceptions and beliefs, while it wags a finger at the folly of our self-righteousness.” Kirkus Reviews called it “Impressive speculative fiction, and a bracing tonic for an election year”—it was published the year Obama won the presidency.

“American Savior can be seen as the Way of the Cross for a new millennium,” the Jesuit magazine America observes, adding, “the novel has a somber, but inspiring denouement.” Raised in a traditional Italian Catholic family, Merullo exhibits a “wistfulness over his memories of a cherished institution that now has a reduced status.”

American Savior: A Novel of Divine Politics
By Roland Merullo
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008