 Briggs, Georgia, Icon, Chesterton: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017. Today, my friends, we owe a debt of gratitude to the wonderful Matushka Emma Cazabonne for recommending I read a relatively new novel by a talented young Southern author. (Thanks, Emma!) The book is a new take on an old story, or, rather, an old and persistent threat to civilizational states, especially those grounded in Christianity. It is a somewhat disturbing look at an alternative contemporary or near-future Alabama and America.
Icon, by Alabama author Georgia Briggs, is a stirring dystopian story told from an explicitly Orthodox Christian point of view. Briggs succeeds brilliantly in melding her faith with her genre. If I am not mistaken, this was her first novel, ergo, her success is an amazing achievement and a great testament to her ability. Icon is available from the Ancient Faith Store and Amazon. Also, please visit Briggs at her website. In Icon, young Euphrosyne learns that an innocent mistake at school quickly leads to death, oppression, and terror. Some might find the plot initially confusing, especially since it unfolds in the new and grand “Era of Tolerance”. However, others will wisely recall that tolerance was one of the chief sins of King Jeroboam. Euphrosyne, her family, and her friends find themselves living in an occupied state that tolerates everything … except Christianity. Clinging to tradition in this new age results in brutal and relentless intolerance. Briggs does a fine and fascinating job portraying how the repression transpires and how it affects those caught in the crosshairs. That she does this so convincingly from the primary perspective of a twelve-year-old girl is very impressive. But the choice of Euphrosyne’s eyes should not necessarily be surprising because, while all people suffer under tyranny, perhaps none are so afflicted as children. The real world gives us constant, daily reminders of that sad fact for those willing to see them. I will leave the hows and whys behind the rise of Brigg’s draconic fool’s paradise for the discovery of the reader—and the reader will thoroughly enjoy the journey of revelation. Yet I will say I thought Briggs’s moniker for those in control of the new Alabama and new America was a poignant bit of genius. She took an old and famous name from America’s nineteenth-century transcendent enlightenment and progressed it forward to a fanciful but very natural and plausible zenith. Plausibility. Interestingly, Briggs wrote Icon in 2017, eight years before I read it. Those eight years have been packed with incidents and trends that should have dropped the veils or blinders from many American and Western eyes. In short, only the truly blind (or the complicit) do not, at this point in our history, begin to at least suspect that something has gone very wrong. A century before Briggs’s pen crafted her tale so artfully, J.B. Bury was busy lauding what he thought were the then-present achievements of the Enlightenment and the coming golden age of free thinking and tolerance, the triumph over Christianity and tradition. See A History of Freedom of Thought (1913). As the entirety of the Enlightenment was a lie and a rank inversion, things didn’t work out exactly as promised. Instead of a peaceful, happy Shangri-la, today’s America sees Christians beaten and imprisoned for praying in public. America openly and even proudly supports, funds, and participates in war and genocide against multiple parties of the innocent around the world, a sizeable portion of them Christians. It is not too far a stretch, certainly within fiction, to foresee an America that openly exterminates Christians. In addition to a moving, alarming story of warning, Briggs also provides an antidote. At certain points in Icon, particularly at the end, I found myself silently hoping for stern physical retaliation from the oppressed or liberating action from outside parties. I will divulge that as the Orthodox Believers of Alabama are hunted, Russian Spetsnaz troops do not arrive to save the day. But Briggs had a far better idea. Someone does show up at the end, and there is no earthly substitute for the deliverance and compassion he brings to Euphrosyne. It is a miracle in a book full of miracles. Just when all feels lost, the young protagonist wins the ultimate fight, via her Christian faith and her acknowledged (if not so-named) eschatological optimism. “[Y]ou lived well,” she is told. Indeed, she survives in glory and learns the true meaning behind Jesus’s reassurance when He said, “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you. …[B]ut I have chosen you out of the world...” John 15:18-19. Briggs salvages eternal beauty out of tragedy and perfidious horror. Her plot, purpose, scenes, and settings are vivid, valid, and believable. Her characters bring to life the best and worst of human behavior and capability. As for the good potential within Christians, she delivers with convincing eloquence stern adherents to our faith who are, despite all else, joyous, reflective, defiant, zealous, and selfless. For a shorter work, and one marketed for the young adult audience, the spiritual lessons within Icon are astounding. Oh, and THE icon is as much a character, as much a hero as he is a title! For all these reasons, and for those the reader will find beneath the cover, I happily recommend Icon by Georgia Briggs. I also recommend buying a few extra copies to give as gifts to children, grandchildren, students, parish friends, neighbors, or any other young people the reader might know and care about. Help spread the word. Deo vindice.
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Your reviewer owes the late, great Tom Moore for helping discover the subject matter of today’s critique. I’m not sure if Tom ever read anything by Chris Orcutt, but I know that if he had, then he would have enjoyed it. As I have written before, Tom was an extremely good friend and my adopted big brother. He also served admirably as my mentor en écriture de fiction, wingman, and general conspirator. Sometime after his death, I stumbled across Orcutt’s website while randomly looking for new authorial inspiration. The first thing I read was his essay, “Being a Novelist Isn’t a Job, It’s a Lifestyle”. I approved. Tom would have approved. Read it yourself and you’ll catch a glimpse of an artist as dedicated to the craft as may be found anywhere. Now it is my honor to briefly examine one of his many novels, the fun, daring, and masterfully written One Hundred Miles from Manhattan.  (Stately, eclectic cover design by Elisabeth Pinio.) *Orcutt, Chris, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan, “Wellington”, NY: Have Pen, Will Travel, 2014 (2017 2nd Kindle edition) One Hundred Miles from Manhattan has been occasionally deemed a collection of short stories. And it is. But isn’t every novel chapter a short story? Probably. So by linking a series of these things together, especially if they are well-linked, a legitimate novel—however we define “legitimate”—is born. Orcutt describes his book as a “modern novel”, see the cover above. That is true in the sense it is contemporary fiction and that it innocently defies certain conventions or preconceptions in a manner to make Gustave Flaubert or Julian Barnes proud. The ten stories or chapters offer ten different perspectives on a series of independent yet related tales. Orcutt sets up a fine plot of points, which are then connected by the reader’s immersed mind. The book reminded me of a few other works. Orcutt’s stories, all of them vivid and engrossing, take place in the fictional town of Wellington, New York. That geographic commonality at once suggested, in my mind, Mary Morrissy’s Prosperity Drive. (You leave the Aussies intact, Lassie?) Characters reappear and themes recur here and there. And Wellington itself becomes a perpetual personality in much the same form and fashion as the titular character in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Street”. And just like Morrissy’s Prosperity Drivers and Lovecraft’s Lane, albeit in distinctive locution, Wellington and its population are adroitly, entertainingly, and guardedly presented as offbeat. Who doesn’t love to hate the rich? Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 24:19. Confucius said, “Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the consequence of deviating from the way, then I would have no part of them.” It’s not necessarily that the wealthy are wicked. Or it’s not that, in a sense of totality, money is evil. Part of the stigma of the well-to-do is that their fortune allows them the opportunity to engage in behavior inherent to all of us with unfettered ease and unadulterated excess. That alone might explain much of the universal caution against the trappings of great opulence. Forewarned or not, Wellington is overrun with wealthy people, both of the generational landed gentry and the nouveau riche Manhattanite yuppie kinds. Much of the narration involves horses. Horses are fine and noble beasts, yet horse people are about as weird as they come. If one knows, then one knows: from California to Kentucky to Florida, it’s the same pattern. Wellington’s “hilltoppers” are sterling examples of horse and general monied eccentricity. However, safely confined within the pages of a book, their various follies make for excellent fiction. Orcutt opens with a quote by Anton Chekhov. He then proceeds with a story about an unusual “shooting party”, one led by a rather determined woman. Her self-imposed exile at the end appears happier and less taxing than, say, tenure at a standard labor camp. Another tale delves deeply into the lethally neurotic absurdity of fighting over a literal pile of trash. Perhaps you, dear reader, have heard of or imagined such things? Yet another story reminds us that little to nothing will come between the hobby engineer and his model train set layout. Assorted cautionary themes run the length of the book. In a sense, perhaps an inverted sense, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan might be considered an American ode to the Russian village fiction of the twentieth century. Lavish as it is, there is a certain pastoral romanticism associated with Wellington. And in keeping with the spirit of Valentin Rasputin, et al, a level of hardship is keenly examined—though it is volitional hardship, not so much on the local peasantry but, rather, on the peculiar affluent residents. Some of the presented rural fascination is coupled with criticism of modernity, subtle yet palpable criticism delivered with ranged emotion. Orcutt’s writing is crisp, evocative, and arresting. He balances, very well, a technical precision with great relatability. Somewhere, he mentioned he writes stories he would like to read. He succeeds with aplomb, which is a testament to several factors (that I can think of): a deeply contemplative philosophical outlook, high creativity, and an ability to accomplish that hardest and most critical aspect of writing—being able to jot it all down in such a way that the reader not only understands but mentally makes the story his own. He’s noted in several places his admiration for different great authors of the past. If he ever tried to emulate some of their manners or tack—and all of us try that to some extent—then he has succeeded in channeling the best as required and where necessary; but, he has also developed a most unique and enjoyable style all his own. More of Orcutt’s rare distinctiveness is on humorous, insightful display in his 2017 book, Perpetuating Trouble: A Memoir, which is part biography, part story-telling, and part poignant writing guide. I highly recommend it, to writers and all, along with, of course, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan. I’m also looking forward to 2026 and the coming first segment of Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome, a nine-episode novel, twice the heft of War and Peace, about Gen X and our glory in the greatest of all decades, the 1980s. Grab the Swatches and pop those collars! Evidently, Orcutt spent the past decade locked in the last functioning Aladdin's Castle mall arcade researching and refining the chronicle. If dedication equals perfection then… Okay, honestly, I was there. Did that and all. Part of me really wants to relive the majesty. But part of me is a little wary that once pulled back… I won’t want to leave again! Rad. This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on July 5, 2025.
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