Guess who does all the work on the ark

When I started this job, there was a note in the desk that advised never judge a book by its cover, but I've got to make an exception for "The Preservationist." The cover of David Maine's novel about Noah features an engraving of those paired animals strolling off to repopulate the world. But all those happy faunae are covered by a die-cut dust jacket of the flood that hides everything except the Ark. Only children's books or expensive greeting cards are supposed to get this treatment. The design, by St. Martin's Steve Snider, is just the sort of clever (and expensive) introduction this curious little novel deserves.

The story of Noah that I heard as a child was heavy on the Ark and the animals, particularly the dove's cameo appearance and the spectacular rainbow finale. God's wrathful drowning of almost everyone on the earth received considerably less emphasis, and I didn't come across Noah's drunken humiliation in front of his sons until I was a father myself.

Maine includes it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly, along with the snakes, the goats, and the elephants. There are any number of witty, sometimes beautiful touches here, extrapolated from the strange details of this ancient myth. Noah, for instance, must convince the giants who were "in the earth in those days" to help him gather enough wood and pitch, even while conceding their imminent doom. And much later, once the rain stops, he and his family must find some way to pass the time, month after month, on that "floating barnyard." (Waste management is a bigger problem than Genesis lets on.)

I can't say I was ever on the edge of my seat - Will the Ark float? Will humanity be saved? - but the real pleasure of this novel flows from its sensitive portrayal of how different members of a family respond to the patriarch's blaring faith.

Each short chapter, narrated by a different member of the clan, begins with a quotation from the Douay translation of 1582, which uses slightly different names than modern readers are accustomed to. Noe (Noah) is the only character who doesn't narrate his own story; Maine handles the ark-builder himself: "The wife pokes desultorily at a pot of stew hanging over a fire. It is late for supper: the others have eaten already and retired to the sleeping room. Noe squats against one of the rough limewashed walls and points at a terra cotta bowl. He's roughly 600 years old: words are unnecessary."

Noe's wife - peeved that no one knows her name - reacts to her husband's apocalyptic revelation with gruff resignation. She's put up with a lot, beginning with her brutal honeymoon (described here without any Old Testament euphemism).

Their three sons receive Noe's command to build an enormous boat in the desert with a range of responses that signal their temperaments. Where you might expect types and caricatures, Maine supplies young men of real complexity, sons who rise and fall on the tide of this ordeal in moving and troubling ways. Japheth, the youngest, never wants to leave his wife's bed. Sem, the oldest, treats Noe's word as gospel. And Cham, in the middle, believes he's the real brawn and brains behind their father's shipbuilding project.

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