Run Before the Rain: An Antediluvian Adventure—I must admit, I had to look up the word “antediluvian” before I started reading the book. The word means “of or relating to the period before the flood described in the Bible” according to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. So I presumed that the book was about the world between Adam and Noah.
Michael Vetter has written a wonderful tale targeted at teens and young adults, but as an older adult, I too enjoyed Run Before the Rain. Michael has imagined a technologically advanced world that uses tamed dinosaurs for transportation and has made huge leaps in the sciences of zoology, biology, and astronomy.
Seth’s descendent, Enoch, had interviewed Adam about life in the Garden of Eden and after shortly before Adam died and written it down in the Book of Adam. Adam had founded the Adam Institute where he pursued a life studying zoology, as God had given him the task of caring for the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. [Gen 1:26, ESV]
Sixteen hundred years has passed since the time Adam was given that charge and the world had changed. In the line of Seth were Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. Lamech said at the time Noah was born, … Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. [Gen 5:29, ESV] After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. [Gen 5:32, ESV]
Noah, a famed zoologist like his ancestor, Adam, receives an important message from God. God is angry at the evil of mankind and is going to destroy everything on Earth. Noah is told to build a ship to carry him, his family, and samples of every kind of being safely away from a global flood.
How Noah carries out God’s task, how and why the world has become so evil, how civilization has advanced since creation, and how the task is accomplished has never been told in quite this fashion. You’ll be intrigued by the search for the Book of Adam that has been lost. I was fascinated at the society that Vetter has imagined and the technology that he posits existed. You will be entertained as well to find out how everything was completed. Although the book reads a bit slowly, the characters of Noah, Japheth, and Methuselah are well fleshed out as is the character of Miriam, Noah’s wife. Vetter’s imagination tugged me along as the story progressed. I found myself believing the times might just have been like he conceives. Four Stars.
Michael Vetter is a former US Air Force intelligence officer and has a degree in ocean engineering from MIT. He now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Mary. Run Before the Rain is the first book in a three-volume series, followed by One World Tower and Flight From Egypt. You can reach Michael at Michael Vetter.
Run Before the Rain: An Antediluvian Adventure
Michael Vetter was kind enough to give me a copy of Run Before the Rain for my candid review.