Prayer for the DyingPrayer for the Dying
a Novel
Title rated 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 38 ratings(38 ratings)
Book, 1999
Current format, Book, 1999, , No Longer Available.Book, 1999
Current format, Book, 1999, , No Longer Available. Offered in 0 more formatsA Prayer for the Dying is Stewart O'Nan's most astounding achievement yet, a sunlit Gothic painted in shimmering prose that darkens the further you go into it, until, as in the best Poe and Flannery O'Connor, there is no turning back.Set in a leafy Wisconsin town just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying opens harmlessly on a languid summer day; only slowly do events reveal themselves as sinister, blooming gently into a shared nightmare, as one neighbor after another succumbs to a creeping, always fatal disease. Our sole witness to this epidemic is Jacob Hansen, Friendship's sheriff, undertaker, and pastor. As the disease engulfs the town, Jacob must find a humane way to govern, as well as take care of his wife and baby daughter, though there seems no way to save those he loves short of calling a full quarantine and boarding up the sick in their houses. And what of the tramps slipping nightly through the tinder-dry woods, the spiritualists from the city camped on the edge of town with their charismatic leader Chase? Who-will bury the dead properly, if not Jacob?Dark, poetic, and chilling, A Prayer for the Dying asks if it's possible to be a good man in a time of madness. It confirms what some readers have known all along: Stewart O'Nan is not merely one of the best young novelists in America, but one of the finest novelists of our time.
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- New York, N.Y. : Henry Holt : 1999
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