For Aden, a series of induction regimens follow. She studies in a small rural madrassa and takes a new name, Suleyman, which is similar to one that Lindh adopted. She begins military training and eventually makes her way to the front lines of battle in Afghanistan. The men she is with, at each step in her pilgrim’s progress, grow harder and more cruel. At every moment, she is in desperate fear of being found out.

These militants are deeply suspicious of Aden. At the same time, she’s an exotic curio of jihad. Children gather around her to learn about America. (“You drink milk in America? Milk with chocolate powder?”) Men notice an oddly luminous quality about her. One compares her to “the peacock in the rich man’s garden.”

“Godsend” contains some very adept writing about theology and religious feeling. The ways that sexual and religious elation can combine, and combust, are not discounted in this novel. Aden becomes close to one man in particular. He may have known her secret all along.

This is probably the place to say that “Godsend” mostly cuts against the grain of my own taste. I lack the spiritual gene, and I can grow resentful of novels that lead me into a cave of superstition and hushed ignorance and then seal the entrance. It can all grow too humid; I want motorized windshield wipers for my eyeglasses.

Wray manages to nearly always hold a skeptical reader rapt, however. This is a significant literary performance. This novel’s contents are under enormous pressure. The author has clearly mastered a great deal of learning about Islam and warfare and the nature of life in Afghanistan, and he carefully husbands these resources. There are no blood clots of showily displayed research to block this novel’s arteries.

This is Wray’s fifth novel. Each of his previous books is worth attending to — especially, in my estimation, “Lowboy” (2009), about a young boy who goes missing in the tunnels below Manhattan. That novel has some parallels with this one.

Aden is a sympathetic character. She’s also a bit of a blank. We don’t learn much about her life back in Santa Rosa, except that she was unhappy. Lindh was a rap fan. Wray gives that quality to Aden’s friend, the one who travels over with her. He buys a copy of Vibe magazine in the Dubai airport.