Jesus Land

Jesus Land is a 2005 memoir by American journalist and author Julia Scheeres. Set in the 1970s, it relates her childhood as the daughter of Calvinist missionaries in Indiana, and as the sister of two adopted African-American boys, David and Jerome. While her brothers suffer racial abuse, Scheeres is sexually abused by Jerome, and all three live in fear of Scheeres’s violent father. Finally, Scheeres and David are sent to a reform school in the Dominican Republic, where they suffer further abuse.

Scheeres’s parents are reluctant to adopt a black child, but there are no white children available through their adoption agency. Deciding the Lord is testing them, they agree to adopt three-year-old David.

They bring him up alongside their natural daughter, Julia, teaching them both about Jesus and subjecting them both to emotional and physical deprivation. The first time Mrs. Scheeres touches David, she fears “the black would rub off on her hands.” Every morning, through the intercom system installed in their ranch home, she blasts out the local Christian music station Rejoice Radio. For breakfast (and lunch, and dinner), she feeds the children leftover scraps. Not because they are poor: Mr. Scheeres is a surgeon in Lafayette. He drives to work in a Porsche.



Despite this parental regime, David grows up to be a sweet-natured, loving boy. Julia dotes on him, and the two become constant companions. They also begin indulging in small acts of defiance against their parents. The two sneak into their father’s study so they can watch TV. David’s favorite show is The Brady Bunch. He doesn’t see his own family as any different from the Bradys.

One day, as they roam the neighborhood, David and Julia come across a homemade sign: “This here is: JESUS LAND.”

Deciding that David needs “one of his own kind” for company, the Scheeres adopt another black child, Jerome. The two boys are made to sleep in the basement, while the Scheeres’ “real” children each get their own bedrooms. Both boys are routinely subjected to violent abuse at the hands of Mr. Scheeres.



Julia begins to question why Jerome and David are beaten for their “sins” while Julia is only sent to her room. She also doesn’t understand why Jerome keeps telling David to side with him against “the whiteys.” Julia and David feel like brother and sister, but no one else seems to see them that way.

Julia is sixteen when her parents move the family to a deeply rural part of Indiana. She soon learns that among the cottonwood trees and trailer parks lurks an ingrained and virulent racism, worse even than her parents’.

Jerome—by now seventeen—responds by acting out violently. One day, he steals the family car and tries to escape for good, only to be brought back by the police. He begins routinely raping Julia, reminding her that he isn’t really her brother.



Julia and David are not free from abuse outside their home either. The local community takes a dim view of Julia’s closeness to a black boy and they can’t go anywhere without enduring racist remarks. They are chased out of the local swimming pool and asked to leave restaurants.

David begins to perform poorly at school and act out in small ways. In punishment, Mr. Scheeres beats him with a two-by-four, breaking his arm. David makes a suicide attempt. His mother’s response: “Why can’t I just have one day of peace?”

David is sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Julia finds her mother scrubbing David’s room with Lysol, “scouring away the remaining traces of his existence.” Julia asks where David’s belongings are. Her mother replies, “He doesn’t live here anyone.”



Without David, Julia has little in her life. She begins drinking heavily. Eventually, she tries to run away. She steals a car, violating a court-ordered curfew. The judge offers to drop the charges if she will return home, but she refuses. She has the option of becoming an emancipated minor, and her boyfriend offers to move away with her, but instead, she chooses to follow David to the reform school: “I will go to David and be family to him.”

She arrives to find things even worse than she anticipated. David’s letters home have been censored. The school is fenced in with barbed wire, and behind the fence, the students are subjected to day-and-night physical and psychological abuse. Hard physical labor and midnight brainwashing sessions are used to break the children’s spirits. Under a baffling and arbitrary system, students are awarded “merit points” for reporting each other’s sins. David and Julia must lean on one another to survive and preserve their identities.

The book ends with the story of one happy day in David and Julia’s life together: one day they spent together on the beach when they were finally released from the reform school.