God is dead. “Died and fell into the sea. ” That’s what Raphael, a despondent angel with luminous white wings and a blinking halo, tells Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday. Soon Van Horne is chared with captaining the supertanker Carpco Valparaiso (flying the colors of the Vatican) as it tows the two-mile-long corpse through the Atlantic toward the Arctic, in order to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition. Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, an estranged father, sabotage both natural and spiritual, a crew on (and sometimes past) the brink of mutiny, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas. As he rings his wild, Vonnegutian changes on everything from male chauvinism to the Catholic Church, James Morrow proves himself to be one of the premier satirists of our time while still managing to capture some of the beauty and sorrow of the world. With Towing Jehovah, the Denver Post declared, Morrow solidifies his position as Christianity’s Salman Rushdie, only funnier and more sacrilegious. — Midwest Book Review