A fine pre-publication review of the new novel, SOME RISE BY SIN, in the most recent issue of Publishers Weekly:
Expanding on several of the themes of his 2009 novel Crossers, Caputo’s latest is a thought-provoking story of unthinkable brutality. Former art history professor Timothy Riordan is the Catholic pastor of San Patricio, a remote village in the Mexican state of Sonora. The foothills of the Sierra Madre range in which San Patricio is located are torn by violent conflicts between drug cartels, local militias, the federal army, and police. Widely respected by the townspeople, Riordan also has the ear of military and intelligence authorities. But rather than helping him fulfill his call to serve and save his flock, Riordan’s network of connections produces deepening moral dilemmas. How, if at all, should information gained from positions of trust—including the confessional—be used in the hope of ameliorating suffering? What is the meaning of God in an apparently demonic world? As an emerging cartel called the Brotherhood wraps trafficking, murder, and mutilation in religious imagery, Riordan faces decisions that test him. A secondary narrative about expat doctor Lisette Moreno never fully gels, and the intricacies of Mexico’s shifting power balance can be difficult to follow. Yet poised as he is between unforgiving vows, lofty ideals, and searing chaos, Caputo’s Riordan is an everyman whose struggles illuminate the contradictions of human nature and the mysteries of faith.
Ever since his first Vietnam book I feel that Mr. Caputo has always struggled with his ideals and the reality he faced in a war where there was moral leakage. Having served in Vietnam myself I can understand how people could survive, and yet be at war with themselves for decades. He probably wants to forget Vietnam. I think of it and all these real world moral contradictions as a dream I once had as a young man. I still feel guilty about what I did not do and not about what I did there. Mexico is just Vietnam all over again to me.
Well and succinctly said.
Mr Caputo, I just purchased and reread A Rumor of War. I first read it in 1979. I read it with a different pair of glasses almost 40 years later. What would be required to obtain a signed copy, in person would be icing on the cake. I am in Chicago, you know where that is! Thank you, Mike
Send your copy, with a self-addressed stamped envelope, to me c/o Aaron Priest Literary Agency, 200 West 41st St., 23d Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036.