Silence the Dead
Book Details
Author(s)David Crossman
PublisherAlibi-Folio
ISBN / ASINB004183N9C
ISBN-13978B004183N91
MarketplaceFrance 🇫🇷
Description
Tragedy is no stranger to the west coast of Ireland, and the old shepherd had seen his share; but he'd never seen anyone fall off a cliff. Looking down, even from a great height, he imagined he saw a slight movement; fancied he heard a cry of anguish in the wind-stuffed silence between waves. But the man's body - twisted back on itself at an impossible angle - was beyond the skill of a doctor to repair. Christ himself, the shepherd thought, would be hard-pressed to remake a man from such a crumpled mass of human debris. Besides, there wasn't a doctor for twenty miles.
The shepherd ran to the church.
Awkwardly, imperiling his own life, the priest clambored down the cliff and knelt beside the fallen man. Before the priest could gather his thoughts, the man - the landlord's caretaker - pulled him close and, with his last breath, rasped in his ear: "Father, forgive me, for I have sinned."
Lust often masquerades as love but, in the caretaker's case, its true nature was manifested in rape, which gave birth to revenge ... and murder. But the dying man's confession had an even darker dimension, for it revealed a terrible injustice had been done to an innocent man, whose orphaned children had been turned out of the village in a time of famine, to face the twin evils of starvation or passage on a coffin ship across the storm-choked Atlantic.
The whispered words the caretaker spat in the priest's ear that morning - and the ghosts of shame and abandonment they summoned - pursue three helpless children from Ireland two thirds of the way across America. Between the beginning and end of that perilous journey, they encounter a Dickensian managerie of characters who portray the human soul in all its shades of light and darkness.
But Thomas - seventeen year-old head of the tiny Conlan tribe - defies nature, man, or beast to keep him from the Promised Land his Uncle Theo swore was tucked in a hidden valley in northern New Mexico. Its name had become an incantation, five letters that the rusted needle of hope had scratched on his heart. 'Chama."
The images of it were the lullaby that sang him to sleep at night. But it was a sleep troubled by dreams, and dreams of a troubling truth: every one knew Uncle Theo was a liar.
The shepherd ran to the church.
Awkwardly, imperiling his own life, the priest clambored down the cliff and knelt beside the fallen man. Before the priest could gather his thoughts, the man - the landlord's caretaker - pulled him close and, with his last breath, rasped in his ear: "Father, forgive me, for I have sinned."
Lust often masquerades as love but, in the caretaker's case, its true nature was manifested in rape, which gave birth to revenge ... and murder. But the dying man's confession had an even darker dimension, for it revealed a terrible injustice had been done to an innocent man, whose orphaned children had been turned out of the village in a time of famine, to face the twin evils of starvation or passage on a coffin ship across the storm-choked Atlantic.
The whispered words the caretaker spat in the priest's ear that morning - and the ghosts of shame and abandonment they summoned - pursue three helpless children from Ireland two thirds of the way across America. Between the beginning and end of that perilous journey, they encounter a Dickensian managerie of characters who portray the human soul in all its shades of light and darkness.
But Thomas - seventeen year-old head of the tiny Conlan tribe - defies nature, man, or beast to keep him from the Promised Land his Uncle Theo swore was tucked in a hidden valley in northern New Mexico. Its name had become an incantation, five letters that the rusted needle of hope had scratched on his heart. 'Chama."
The images of it were the lullaby that sang him to sleep at night. But it was a sleep troubled by dreams, and dreams of a troubling truth: every one knew Uncle Theo was a liar.
