A Whispered Name
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
To keep quiet about something so important . . . well, it's almost a lie, wouldn't you say?'
When Father Anselm meets Kate Seymour in the cemetery at Larkwood, he is dismayed to hear her allegation. Herbert Moore had been one of the founding fathers of the Priory, revered by all who met him, a man who'd shaped Anselm's own vocation. The idea that someone could look on his grave and speak of a lie is inconceivable. But Anselm soon learns that Herbert did indeed have secrets in his past that he kept hidden all his life. In 1917, during the terrible slaughter of the Passchendaele campaign, a soldier faced a court martial for desertion. Herbert, charged with a responsibility that would change the course of his life, sat upon the panel that judged him. In coming to understand the court martial, Anselm discovers its true significance: a secret victory that transformed the young Captain Moore and shone a light upon the horror of war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Brodrick's poignant third Father Anselm mystery (after The Gardens of the Dead), Anselm has an unsettling encounter with a woman in the Larkwood Priory cemetery near Sudbury, England, that raises questions about Fr. Herbert Moore, Anselm's spiritual mentor, who died in 1985. Charged by his prior with investigating Moore's involvement in a WWI court martial, Anselm searches through military records and family histories to piece together an event that altered Moore's life. With impeccable pacing, Brodrick reveals the story of Joseph Flanagan, an Irish soldier whose desertion from and return to the Passchendaele battlefield set the stage for his fateful meeting with Moore. Flashbacks to Flanagan's hardscrabble childhood provide a poetic contrast to brutal war scenes, and Brodrick's unflinching depiction of battle serves as a haunting backdrop for the unfolding conflict between Flanagan and the British army. Readers seeking a thought-provoking, nuanced story that engages difficult moral questions will appreciate this tale of courage, sacrifice, and redemption.
