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Michael Gruber
VALLEY OF BONES (2005) Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. for http://www.barnesandnoble.com Here is how your review will appear on the title page: Valley of Bones REVIEWER: Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), a student of America's religions, August 15, 2006 REVIEWER'S RATING OF Valley of Bones * * * * * (Five Stars) TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Michael Gruber is the latest American Sir Walter Scott Michael Gruber, both as ghost writer (for Robert K. Tanenbaum in the BUTCH KARP detective series) and more recently in his own name, merits to be taken very, very seriously as a religious writer of distinguished prose fiction. He launched Miami black Cuban American Jimmy Paz in 2003's TROPIC OF NIGHT. Themes included Roman Catholicism, hard-shell Biblical Protestantism, voodoo, santeria, Africa and personified good and evil. These motifs all reappear two years later in VALLEY OF BONES. This novel is also a self-conscious tribute to other imaginative writers about religion: Saint Augustine, Sir Walter Scott and Graham Greene, to mention a few. One of two female heroines, Emmy Lou Dideroff, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, later prostitution and drug running, who has a conversion with the help of Saint Catherine of Siena, then becomes a nun in a medical religious order open to women with such pasts. A modern-day Joan of Arc and also reminiscent of the Jesuits who armed Indians in Paraguay against slave- traders, she forms an army of Dinkas in today's Sudan to resist oppression. Later framed by US Government operatives for a murder in Miami which she did not commit, Emmy Lou 'confesses' in writing to Detective Jimmy Paz, as Augustine and Johh Henry Newman before her, how God had done great deeds through her and had been leading her through struggles against good and evil in her life to date. Like Sir Walter Scott, creator of the historical novel, Michael Gruber also writes accurately of Catholics, Protestants and Muslims and goes beyond Scott into African and New World animistic religions such as santeria. Also like Scott in THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, Gruber weaves together two or more separate tales which could stand on their own feet. Again bowing gracefully to the Laird of Abbotsford, Michael Gruber portrays the power of superstition at war in the minds of characters like Paz and his new ultra-rationalist girlfriend, psychologist Lorna Wise. Gruber is as good as Sir Walter Scott in catching the soft voice of God made manifest in coincidences*** Gruber also resonates with another great religious writer of fiction, Graham Greene. Imagine BRIGHTON ROCK's young Pinkie transformed into a girl in Florida, with even fewer redeeming characteristics than the disgusting sociopathic English boy. Later see that girl transformed into Sarah Miles of THE END OF THE AFFAIR, a reluctant saint as enmired in the world, the flesh and the devil as young Augustine, but responding feebly to grace as saints do. VALLEY OF BONES is also a detective story. It keeps, arguably, a few of its clues for too late in the tale, but coming events are foreshadowed in Skeeter Sonnenborg, the hell-raising, traitorous, gunrunning friend of Percival Orne Foy, survivalist marijuana farmer and onetime beloved of Emmy Lou. Do not miss this book. Also recommended: Rober K. Tanenbaum, ACT OF REVENGE. Michael Gruber, TROPIC OF NIGHT, THE WITCH'S BOY. Graham Greene, BRIGHTON ROCK, THE END OF THE AFFAIR. Sir Walter Scott, OLD MORTALITY, THE PIRATE. -OOO- Black Mountain, North Carolina August 15, 2006 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. Review for http://www.amazon.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: A novel that readers clearly love to review, August 16, 2006 REVIEWER: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) Although Michael Gruber has written much fiction, the vast majority of his early product was ghosted for his cousin, Robert K. Tanenbaum. So "Michael Gruber" is still a relatively new name to many. This makes it all the more striking how many intelligent reader-reviews his VALLEY OF BONES has inspired for amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Readers tackle his material with care and depth. Some detect three plot lines, others four. Some notice allusions to Thomas Merton, others to Joan of Arc. This is a writer that lots of people are taking seriously, and rightly so. I am pleased by one of his two heroines, Emmy Lou Dideroff, who models her long, written crime scene memoir to police officer Jimmy Paz on THE CONFESSIONS of Saint Augustine. And I relish Gruber's Graham Greene-like showing God pulling a virtually unwilling Emmy Lou up from a life of sordid meaninglessness to personal sanctity within a dying Church Militant (" ... you assuming that demons and saints can't swell in the same person" Ch. NINE). Otherwise, "the church is the cross on which Christ is crucified every day" (Ch. SEVENTEEN). Now that we are unbelievers, God "mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents" (Ch.TWENTY-THREE). But mostly I am pleasantly surprised how strongly, though not so explicitly as with Augustine and Greene, Michael Gruber evokes Sir Walter Scott. Both are historic and didactic: Scott teaches history, settings, political trends; Gruber teaches Catholicism, Bible Christianity, Sudan, wars. Both writers are sympathetic to persons with different religions or atheisms. They reach into their characters' souls. Both weave together complex plots. Both write of love, dishonor, loyalty, everyday life and morality. Pick up VALLEY OF BONES. It is a whodunnit mystery. It is religion v. skepticism. It is greed for oil. It is good versus evil. You may have trouble putting it down. -OOO- |