Valyruh’s#CBR4 Review #93: Remembering Sarah by Chris Mooney

A well-done psychological thriller about a man trapped in a stifling marriage but deeply in love with his 6 year old daughter. At the beginning of the novel, Mike Sullivan is struggling to give his daughter the sense of independence that his fearful wife will not allow. He takes Sarah to the town’s sledding hill in the middle of a snowfall, and loses her there—finding only her sled and her glasses, which Sarah cannot manage without. A manhunt for the little girl and the man who was seen taking her yields nothing, and five years later, Mike is going through the motions of a life, working with his best friend Bill as a contractor, his marriage long dead, and nothing but guilt and rage to keep him going.

Mike himself is the product of a traumatized childhood, where his father was a thief, a bully, and a wife-beater who struck fear in his son. His mother abandoned the family when Mike was just 9, and to this day, Mike is convinced that his father killed her. He hasn’t spoken to his father since leaving home in his teens. Mike believes that his attempt to give Sarah the toughness and independence he felt children need to survive led to her abduction, and he is ravaged by guilt. He is also driven by the need for revenge, and has centered his attentions on defrocked priest Francis Jonah, also suspected in the disappearance of two other girls before Sarah. No evidence can be found against Jonah, however, and so he lives in the center of town with 2 bodyguards, a restraining order against Mike (who once tried to beat him to death), and terminal cancer.

On the fifth anniversary of Sarah’s disappearance, evidence pops up implicating Jonah, but before the police can move on him, he is found hanging from a tree, a recording of Sarah’s 6-year-old voice playing at its base. The police move to close the case but Mike can derive no satisfaction from Jonah’s suicide, and begins to dig deeper. Against all odds, he ultimately unravels not only the conspiracy behind Sarah’s disappearance, but also the mystery behind the decline of his marriage and the truth behind his own mother’s disappearance decades earlier.

Mooney’s novel is tautly scripted and suffused with strong emotion. His central character is a tormented soul who finds solace only when he lets go of his preconceptions about the people—and the world–around him. Read closely, Remembering Sarah offers a lesson to us all.

ElCicco#CBR4Review#16: The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye

Set in 1845 New York City, The Gods of Gotham is a dark tale of the brutal murders of Irish child prostitutes set against the backdrop of an expanding city coming to grips with immigration (especially Irish Catholics), racism bigotry, the role and rights of women in society, religious zealotry and intolerance. TGOG also features the founding of the New York Police Department. Officers were known as “copper stars” for the badges they wore and were treated with derision and distrust.

Our hero, Timothy Wilde, is prodded into joining the force by his older brother Valentine, who is well known in the city for his involvement in the democratic party and for his work with the fire department. Faye really provides some fascinating history in this area. I had not known that the NYFD was a political organization used to sway voters to support democrats. Valentine and Timothy have a combative relationship. Val possesses many vices, including a morphine addiction, and the fact that he became a fire fighter angers Tim. Val and Tim became orphans due to fire, and a city fire in 1845 disfigured Tim and forced him to change his life plans. It’s Val who gets Tim a job on the police force when he has no other options, recognizing that Tim has skills that will be very useful for detective work — he speaks “flash”, which is a sort of street slang, and his previous job as a bartender helped him hone his skills as a listener and a reader of character.

Within his first week on the job, Tim encounters  9-year-old “kinchin mab” (child prostitute) Bird Daley, covered in blood and fearing for her life. Shortly afterward, the body of a boy, another kinchin mab, is found in a garbage can, with his chest carved open in the shape of a cross. Then, 19 more bodies similarly marked are found in shallow graves on the outskirts of town. Is this the work of an anti-Catholic zealot? Someone trying to discredit the democratic party, which is associated with the newly formed NYPD? A deranged lunatic? As panic and mob violence rise on the streets of New York, police commissioner Matsell puts Tim in charge of an unofficial investigation, making Tim New York’s first detective.

Faye did a lot of work to make her novel as historically accurate as possible. Each chapter begins with a blurb from a newspaper or tract of the time, usually highlighting the virulent anti-Irish/anti-Catholic sentiments of the period. In addition to the plight of Irish Catholics, she explores the world of African Americans, prostitutes, religious crusaders, and women. Two strong female characters are featured in TGOG: Mercy Underhill, daughter of a protestant minister, budding writer and doer of good works for the poor (no matter their religion, color, etc.), and love interest of Tim; and Silkie Marsh, the powerful madam of a house of prostitution which employs children, generous contributor to the democratic party, former love interest of Val, and a real snake-in-the-grass.

There’s not exactly a happy ending to this novel, although Tim does figure out what happened and why. Equally important, though, Tim learns some dark and hard truths about Val, Mercy and himself. It seems that Faye is setting readers up for a series featuring detective Wilde. I look forward to the next in the series, if there is to be one.

ElCicco#CBR4Review#04: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Full title as purchased via Kindle is (The Original) Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Back in high school, some 30 years ago, I read Willa Cather’s My Antonia. While few details stick out besides the tragic ending, I do recall that Cather’s literary environment was the west/frontier in the mid-late 19th century and the immigrant experience. In trying to find something interesting to read for CBR4, I came upon a reference to Death Comes for the Archbishop and saw that it made the Time Magazine top 100 novels since 1923 and the Modern Library’s 1998 list of the top 100 English Language novels. Based on this and vague but positive recollections of My Antonia, I chose Death for this week’s review.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in New Mexico in the second half of the nineteenth century and follows fictional French Catholic Bishop Jean LeTour and his vicar Father Joseph Vaillant in their missionary work amongst Native Americans and Mexicans. I expected the novel to follow a plot line that would involve some sort of conflict, leading to a crescendo and then the expected denouement. This novel, however, did not follow that sort of traditional story line. Instead, it is a series of smaller, more personal than historical conflicts over the span of about 40 years as Bishop LeTour expands his diocese, builds relationships with his flock, endures illness, separations and successes, and builds the Cathedral at Santa Fe. It is a story of his lifelong friendship with Joseph and his growing love for the peoples and landscape of the West. The writing is simply beautiful. Cather paints the landscape of the West with her words. She also shows an understanding and respect for both organized religion and native beliefs.

The problem I have with this story is that it lacks historical context. At the very end, as the archbishop’s health is slipping away, he reflects with happiness upon the fact that he saw the end of slavery and the Indian wars, yet the topic of slavery never comes up as part of the story, and the native wars are mentioned only in a cursory way. Kit Carson is a character in this book and is presented quite favorably as an honorable man. Yet he participated in the brutal displacement of the Navajo from their native lands, a fact which is also recognized in the story. At the end, La Tour is pleased to see that the Navajo have been allowed to return but the fact of their displacement doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on him, even though he knew some of the natives who had to leave and saw their families ripped apart.

The story of LaTour and Vaillant’s friendship is often moving, and the character sketches of some of the locals (especially corrupt priests) are fascinating and sometimes entertaining, but in the end, Death Comes for the Archbishop left me a bit disappointed. Perhaps part of my problem is that I read this after reading Caleb’s Crossing, which is overflowing with historical context and genuine conflict. And perhaps I am unfairly imposing modern understanding and sensibility upon Cather. Maybe none of us is aware of our own context — we know vaguely of wars going on, economic and social issues only as they directly impact us. We go on about our daily lives without much thought for the bigger issues. So why should 19th century missionaries be any different?