only so much he can do. As the death toll rises, the church bell chimes almost continuously and the town is quarantined. Tensions mount. Whole families die, some choose suicide rather suffer the disease, and a fire threatens to move on Friendship, potentially forcing an evacuation. Jacob maintains order, at times perversely, even in the face of personal tragedy and torment by horrible memories of battlefield grotesquery from his fighting in Kentucky. He is a damaged man who never stops struggling. Late in the novel he asks himself, "Why are you always so hopeful? Haven't you learned anything?" The answer is not clear. In the hands of a more overstated
writer, the descriptions and plot turns might seem contrived and
over-the-top. O'Nan's control makes the novel work.
Extremity never slips into parody; violence, though vivid, never
becomes spectacle. Combining Jacob's post-traumatic memories
of combat with the facts of his current tragedy, A Prayer for
the Dying does an extraordinary job of exploring the moral
struggle contained both within the immediate violence of the plague
and the aftermath of intense suffering. ---Brad Katz |
| Plague. Rampant, decimating
virulence. From The Hot Zone's popularizing account
of a thankfully limited outbreak to anxiety over Saddam's Anthrax,
it's part of the current zeitgeist. Recently there's been
the surprise visit from that little old bird-killing (oh, and some
people, too) West Nile bug in NYC. Don't forget drug resistant
TB incubated in Russian prisons and the US homeless population.
Oh, and rumors of the black-market sale of otherwise extinct smallpox
virus.
The image of epidemic is a potent one and it's present literally and figuratively in literature and fiction, high and low. There are modern representations - Albert Camus' The Plague, Stephen King's The Stand, Richard Matherson's vampire novel I Am Legend, one might argue Ionesco's Rhinoceros, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys and George Romero's zombie trilogy. That doesn't even touch discussions of the AIDS crisis. Then there are older pieces Daniel DeFoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, Boccaccio's Decameron, Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly's The Last Man. Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying is a recent and notable addition to these annals of plague-time. The Civil War is recent memory to Jacob Hansen; sheriff, undertaker, and pastor of Friendship, Wisconsin. When the body of a soldier is found in the woods outside town, Jacob goes out to recover the body. On the way back, he finds Lydia Flynn, a member of a local religious commune, incoherent on the side of the road. He brings her, along with the corpse of the soldier, to the town's doctor. Doc diagnoses the problem as diphtheria but can do little for Lydia. The real concern is the community. Doc and Jacob attempt to contain the outbreak while maintaining order and civility in Friendship. The larger conflict, though,
is within Jacob's faith and duty; guilt and love, selfishness
and sacrifice churn within him. Facing such brutal events,
there is |