It’s overlong, and overattentive to its three romantic subplots. But Acts of Faith offers an image of Africa deserving...
Idealism and commitment take combative forms in Caputo’s mordant morality tale, a story that strongly resembles his fine 1980 novel Horn of Africa.
The setting is contemporary Africa’s Sudan, where Arab Muslim forces based in Khartoum wage war against Sudani natives, particularly those of the oil rich Nuba Mountains. Aid to embattled Nubans and their scattered allies is the task that unites (and divides) the numerous characters here. Biracial Kenyan soccer star Fitzhugh Martin finds work with airlift relief operation Knight Air, whose pilots include emotionally clenched American Douglas Brathwaite (driven by a guilty family secret), roughhewn Texan Wes(ley) Dare and plucky young Canadian Mary English (who surprises Wes, and us, by falling for the aging reprobate). Other involved figures include British Africanophile philanthropist Diana Briggs; pilot Tara Whitcomb (“the modern-day Beryl Markham”), who flies for Knight Air’s competition; Arab omda (warlord) Ibrahim Idirs, torn between making unwanted war and seeking his missing Nuban mistress; SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army) officer Michael Goraende; and Iowan missionary Quinette Hardin, who gives herself to Africa with passionate headlong intensity, and thereafter dutifully embraces the consequences of her actions. Caputo’s rich plot engulfs these, and many other ideologues, mercenaries and do-gooders, in several vividly detailed sequences: a dangerous mission to a makeshift mountain “hospital”; the reclamation of slaves from their greedy captors; the failure of Brathwaite’s scheme to organize international aid by staging a celebratory “Nuban Day”; battles between Goraende’s liberationist “army” and vastly superior Islamic invaders; and the airplane “accidents” staged to cover Knight Air’s real agenda, precipitating an explosive and bitter climax.
It’s overlong, and overattentive to its three romantic subplots. But Acts of Faith offers an image of Africa deserving comparison with Conrad, Hemingway, Peter Matthiessen, and Jan de Hartog’s forgotten near-masterpiece The Spiral Road.Pub Date: May 9, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-41166-6
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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