Book Review: Dog Days in Bedlam

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Dog Days in Bedlam     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
David James Trapp
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Romance   Religious Fiction
PublishAmerica, 2002, $19.95, 147 pp.

In biblical times, King Orion of Aipotu visits his loyal subjects struggling to survive in the impoverished Bedlam where he encourages the villagers that prosperity is just around the next hut. Though he knows his subjects lack food, he and his large retinue eat and drink everything in sight as is the want of a royal. Orion also awaits his pleasure with the town’s prettiest virgin, Ofra.

However, the elder’s daughter loves Hershel the brothelite, whose mother was the local prostitute. Hershel shares Ofra’s feelings, but has always felt his station in life is beneath that of his beloved. Still rather than allow the king to legally rape her, Hershel and Ofra plan to flee together, not realizing that the elders including her sire and the regal elite will never allow them to simply leave as she is intended to pleasure the monarch.

DOG DAYS IN BEDLAM is an intriguing vividly harsh descriptive take on life in the days before Noah. The biblical society is filled with brutality as Kings take care of their hedonistic needs while insuring the scribes turn them into heroic caring figures for posterity (who writes the history books?). The villagers are not much better than the royal sharks as they survive using “virginal sacrifice” to appease their decadent leaders while shamming as if it’s for their God. The audience will never look at history or the bible the same way as this well written thought provoking novel is easy to read due to as much to a paradigm switch as to rape, murders, and other cruelty. David James Trapp makes a strong case that violence is as biblical a norm as “an eye for an eye”.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner