Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In What’s Your Nineveh? When Running from Your Calling Becomes Its Own Kind of Hell, Keith Thorn turns the biblical account of Jonah into a question of what happens when a person keeps refusing the duty God has placed on them. In the Bible, Jonah flees God's command to go to Nineveh, only to find himself cast into the sea, where a great fish becomes the place in which his refusal is brought to a breaking point. When he finally reaches Nineveh, there's a change from physical flight to the harder question of what it means to accept mercy when it is given to the people God wanted judged. Thorn uses Jonah’s return as proof that divine purpose remains after failure, asking whether the grace that saved Jonah can also be accepted when it is extended to others.

Keith Thorn’s What’s Your Nineveh? takes a Bible story that a lot of people have heard of but few non-Christians thoroughly know, retells it within its intended context, and applies it to a message that is relatable. What hit home hardest is how Thorn treats Jonah’s renewal as the heart of the book, especially in the beautifully handled passage where the loss of the plant’s shade is a metaphor for the narrowness of his heart before opening him to compassion. The writing is surprisingly easy and, in several places, even light and conversational. Nineveh was foreign to me, and Thorn molded it from an idea into a real place. By making Jonah’s inward change parallel to our everyday lives, the author shares his wisdom in a style that feels personal.