The Christian fantasy, a new novel by author GM Jarrard, asks the question, "if you discovered a place where the people were of one heart, one mind, dwelt in righteousness with no poor among them, what would you give to gain entrance to such a place?" Put another way, would you like to live in a place that really was "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all?" It's an ideal that appeals to our "better angels," as Lincoln said; a place where, to quote Martin Luther King, "people are judged not by the color of their skin, but rather by the content of their characters." In The Invitation, we get a glimpse of such a mythical place. The first character we meet is Jonathan Blum, a military attaché at the US Embassy in Israel, who still carries the burden of visiting concentration camps after World War II and prosecuting war criminals. But when he gets his invitation, his life mission and his outlook are both changed as he helps others, like Joey and Dana Kunz, find their way to the "Shining City." When we are introduced to the Kunzes, nothing was going to stop Joey from finally getting the multi-million dollar payday due from the tech company he helped start, except perhaps his grandmother. All she wanted was a weekend of his time to help her move to a spa retreat in the mountains. It sounded simple enough. But, when he and his wife Dana follow a mysterious hand-drawn map to take the old woman to a place no one has ever heard of, suddenly it's 1925 and Calvin Coolidge is President. Instead of the chaos and corruption of today, they discover a small-town paradise with healing waters, no crime, no sickness, and no death. To stay, they need an invitation. Easier said than done. It wasn't so much the suspicions cast at them, comments by the media comparing Joey with cult leaders Jim Jones or David Koresh, accusations of embezzlement, or even a kidnapping that would stop him. Rather, it was whether or not he'd keep his $12 million payout OR accept The Invitation to the Shining City on the Hill. That's the $12 million question.
