Leaper: The Misadventures of a Not-Necessarily-Super Hero, by Geoffrey Wood

A few months back, I reviewed Geoffrey Wood's second novel, The God Cookie.  All the good humor, quirky characters, and deeply-felt life lessons of the God Cookie were there in his first novel, Leaper: The Misadventures of a Not-Necessarily-Super Hero.  Wood does like his coffee.  Leaper, a.k.a. James, a recently-divorced, thirty-year-old, slightly neurotic coffee server (I can't bring myself to use the pretentious-sounding 'barrista.') suddenly discovers that he has the ability to instantaneously "leap" from place to place.  As he struggles to control and understand this new ability, he becomes convinced that it is a gift from God, and wonders if he is good enough for it.

That is the core of James's struggle.  He knows that God has given him this ability in order to use it for good.  But  he knows that he is not good of himself, and does not believe that he has the capacity to do good.  He thus makes up his mind not to leap.  Isn't this how many of us struggle with God?  I feel pretty certain that I'll never be faced with the question of how to handle my super powers, but I, and all of us, have gifts from God.  Will we bury them, or will we use them to God's glory?

Wood wraps these questions up nicely in an entertaining, fast-moving story.  There are plenty of laughs here, but there was too much poignancy--dealing with the question of good, dealing with the pain of divorce, and dealing with the loss of an acquaintance to suicide--to call this a comedic novel.  Nevertheless, it is definitely a well-written first novel, worthy of a read.