Book Review: Dying Declaration by Randy Singer

Title: Dying Declaration
Author: Randy Singer
Publisher: WaterBrook Press
Copyright: 2004
Pages: 421
ISBN: 1-57856-776-9
Genre: Fiction/Christian legal

A blue-collar father prays over his feverish toddler for several days. Thomas Hammond can't bear the thought of little Joshie dying from the sickness, but neither can he bear the thought of failing God in his faith. Thomas's church teaches that people demonstrate their faith in God's power to heal by looking to God for healing. The church forbids its members to see doctors, visit hospitals, or take medication.

Joshie's desperate parents finally break with the teaching of their church, but it's too late to save Joshie. His death lands his parents in a state trial. As they await the outcome, the judge orders their other two kids removed from their care. The court-appointed advocate is only fulfilling community service time, but she soon learns to love the children. For the sake of those children, Nikki convinces a top-notch lawyer and law school professor to defend Thomas Hammond.

This lawyer is nothing like Thomas. Charles is black, Thomas white; Charles is a successful white-collar professional, Thomas an accused murderer from a working-class neighborhood. Charles is a divorced man with no children, Thomas a married man and father. Yet they both place a premium on faith. And so things begin to happen.

The thing I found most impressive about Dying Declaration was its complexity. In addition to building the main storyline, Singer also manages to interweave threads that deal with racial profiling, divorce and trust, faith's intersection with love, justice and corruption, and dating outside one's faith.

Anyone who's been deeply involved in one or more of these issues knows how gray they can look and how thorny they can feel. When we-as complex people-face complex situations, we encounter dilemmas, moral questions, and confusing emotions. Singer gives his characters these dilemmas, questions, and emotions. When lawyer Charles finds himself in jail, he must decide whether to defend a guilty man in order to preserve his own health and safety during his jail stay. Child advocate Nikki must decide whether to abide by the court's orders or bend them for the "greater good" of the case and the children in her care.

Regardless of whether you think the characters make right or wrong choices, you have to admit that each choice affects other characters, as well as the final outcome of the story. Each choice creates a new situation with new choices. Thus the plot of Dying Declaration unfolds, totally aside from coincidence. The characters' choices drive this plot forward.

Singer combines believable characters and realistic settings with controversial issues and matters of faith. I believe that the depth of these issues raises Singer's work a notch above secular legal novels that offer riveting plots but lack characters with spiritual sides.