Moses Unchained - Hardcover

Moriarty, Marilyn F.

3.86

7 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820319856 ISBN 13: 9780820319858

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1998

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Zack Rosen was a simple man, but one of many contrasts. An urban Jew from New Jersey who moved south and converted to fundamentalist Christianity, he was not a philosopher or theologian but a man's man, a tattooed truck driver who built a classic Harley-Davidson from spare parts. In Florida he met and married Shelley, another converted Jew, but their happiness was brief. After they moved to Virginia, secrets from Shelley's past came back to haunt them, and her sudden death from pneumonia revealed a shocking fact: She had AIDS, and she had given the virus to Zack.
Suddenly faced with the loss of his family, his job, his income, and eventually, his own life, Zack became an itinerant evangelist. He introduced himself to author Marilyn F. Moriarty in 1993 with the words, "I got an honorable testimony."
She listened to his story and became his friend and caregiver. At his request, she has told his story here.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Marilyn F. Moriarty is a professor of English at Hollins College.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The disturbing, candid biography of a man with AIDS who died in 1995. Moriarty, an award-winning author of short fiction, became personally involved with the books subject, Zack, in the final months of his life. Zack asked her to tell his story through this book (her first), which Moriarty writes in the first person, from Zacks point of view. Zack comes across as a bundle of contradictions: a Jew who converted to evangelical Christianity; a New Jersey native who spent his entire adult life in the South; a tattoo-marked trucker and weight lifter who imagines himself a sensitive man. Zack contracted AIDS through his second wife, Shelley, who never told him that she had the disease. In fact, Zack didnt learn the truth until after Shelleys mysterious death from pneumonia. Their marriage rested on a series of lies; Zack discovered three years in, for example, that Shelley had several more children than she claimed. After her death, looking back on their marriage, Zack began to suspect that she had intentionally infected him, since she had insisted on frequent anal sex, and vaginal intercourse during her period. The marriage appears to have been mutually abusive (though this version casts Shelley as the primary abuser). But the rage that Zack expresses in telling his story indicates a more pervasive hatred of women, repeatedly calling himself a pussy-whipped man and referring to the wife of his best friend as a cold, anus-mouthed woman. Such revelations are intensely disquieting, as is his honesty about one of the ways he dealt with his illnesshe strangled one of his daughters rabbits. As he coped with his disease, Zack became an AIDS advocate, speaking in Virginia schools and churches, where pastors were more willing to allow a heterosexual speaker but often cautioned him not to mention condoms in his speeches. Well told, crafted together with Zacks own phrases and unique perspective, this is a terrible tale not soon to be forgotten. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.