They wanted to break him. He refused to bow.
Fourteen-year-old Malachi is brilliant, self-assured, and quietly furious. He’s gay. He’s an atheist. And he’s the son of a Baptist pastor.
When his parents send him to a Christian “conversion” camp, Malachi arrives armed with arguments and defiance, ready to endure, maybe even escape. But what begins as manipulation and shame soon turns into something far more dangerous, a place where control is absolute, obedience is enforced, and violence wears a holy face.
As the rules tighten and the punishments deepen, Malachi fights to hold onto the only things they can’t take from him: his love for another boy, and the voice inside him that refuses to be silenced.
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer is a bold, unflinching LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel about faith, survival, first love, and the courage to stay true to yourself when the world tries to erase you.
Perfect for readers of Boy Erased, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and They Both Die at the End.
Some Reviews From Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to read, but true
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2023
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
I read a lot of gay stories, from beginning to the end, it was the most beautiful pieces I have read. I do believe in God, and like you I have the Bible backward and forward. It is horrendous to think that that practice still exist. Malachi was lucky, but what of the ones that didn’t survive, and does God allow or does he sit back and does nothing?
4.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2022
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
I wasn’t prepared for this. As a devout believer in God and Christ, I dispared at the in depth discussion of atheism, but it was very well done. Having read about the author’s background and education, I’m not surprised at how well this story is written. Having come late in life to understanding and accepting homosexuality and my own bisexuality, I cried with the boys and felt rage at the abuse they suffered. I will recommend this book to others.
5.0 out of 5 stars How many stars would be enough?
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2022
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Resurrection in the title is so very appropriate. As I read this, and it’s not the first time I’ve read about this form of Christian torture, I liked Malachi from the first chapter. I thought he was moving well through the threats in his life and finding intellectually rewarding things to be distractions. His friendship with Sam gives me hope, also. But, the horrors of that camp forced me to take breaks… not long… I needed to remind me of the nature of this writing. When that camps’ monsters seemed to let up on the torture, the horrors tended to worsen. After the camp, I was hoping for things to get better quickly. Yet, Clay demanded we see the realities of this horror. Malachi and his friends needed help, medicinally and psychologically… a lot of help. This resurrection took a lot more that 3 days. The tragedy near the end of the book brings tears to most readers. Emotional investment in this book is almost mandatory. I will miss Malachi and his story, and I am committed to condemnation of evils like this damn camp to our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters. Parents who love their gods more than their children should lose the right to have custody of their children. These parents, like Malachi’s, need to EARN forgiveness through actions of repentance, while society must stand up for the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. A story well told, and a story that NEEDS to be told and HEEDED by all of us.
5.0 out of 5 stars Broken
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2021
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
This book broke me like the main character Malachi. I cried, lost my speech, cried some more had to stop reading all because of everything that happened. This book is dirty, ugly and a raw truth that nobody wants to dive into. From the religious abuse to the abuse at the conversion camp to Malachi’s slow and painful recovery to finding himself and his freedom. This book is an intense wild ride that will have you holding your breath until the end. So worth it but definitely a tear jerker.
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended – Fascinating Exposition of PTSD Suffering
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2019
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
If you suffer from any form of PTSD for any reason, read this book. The story of Malachi is not just the story of a gay guy getting abused. It’s the story of any of us–regardless of our orientations–who have had to endure horrific experiences and then try to find our way back to that precious state of mind we think of as normalcy.
The scenes are terrible and true. Horrible things happen and the reader is swept along with Malachi and his story as he tries to find a way to cope with what others have done to him. This is no ‘social-justice’ tome to be ignored. This is an in-depth journey into the mind of someone who struggles to hope, who fears that hope was always just an illusion. It’s his journey to somehow find a way to survive the memory of real monsters.
The author holds nothing back in this story. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially if you are having trouble with any form of PTSD. It helped me.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excruciatingly painful and difficult reading – but ultimately exalting and totally worth it
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2016
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
After reading and, yes, weeping over THE CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION OF MALACHI THE QUEER (as well as the author’s BARELY less dark but similarly themed JACK’S DIARY), one has to almost literally detox from some of the characters forced upon us by novelist Damian Jay Clay. I’ve come to the conclusion that no one creates more realistically horrific, homophobic right wing “Christian” fanatics than Clay. (He hints that, as a child, he suffered from these very same villains so I empathetically offer him a digital hug).
As noted, dealing with and absorbing the beloved Malachi’s story was extremely difficult. Over the two days (off and on) taken up with reading this book, I had to frequently turn the Kindle off and let it – and my mind and heart – rest and recover a bit. There is THAT much meanness, cruelty, violence and ignorance in this book – but all of it, ultimately, resulting in a hard-earned but worthwhile learning experience for the reader and a kind of exalting “resurrection” for young Malachi and his fellow “prisoners.” But, oh! The price they had to pay.
The intuitive reader knows upon beginning the book that “our three” gay teen boys – Malachi, Noah and Jacob – are going to come out of their demeaning and cruel experience alive and “okay” (or as “okay” as you can be with recurring PTSD) but all three, bless them, are badly and permanently scarred – thanks to vicious homophobic parents and the hypocritical tortures to which the 3 boys were subjected by the director and staff of the so-called Leviticus Ministries camp right after the boys were sent there (separately) for Torture and “Pray Away the Gay” reparative therapy – now almost universally considered by the scientific and medical community to be deceptive and unethical.
For page after page I was experiencing total revulsion at the way these teen guys were treated and – I admit it – I finally, for reassurance, had to sneak a peak at a few pages near the end of the book before I could go on.
Thank goodness that for every hateful demon like Leviticus staffer Gareth and like Malachi’s Baptist preacher father, there are also angelic total opposites like Nurse Practitioner Porter and like scientist Sam Hawnett. [Well, Sam is an atheist “angel” ;-]
Again, concerning the first chapter of the story, one knows that Malachi, thankfully, found true love somehow. But he (and Noah) had to go through total hell for that to happen. They fought hard and suffered much for the happiness they discovered in spite of their deep mental and physical scars. I am so jubilant for them.
+++++++++
NOTE: For people who might have trouble with what are called “triggers,” please be warned that this book is full of them :-/