The Promise of Light: A Novel

by Paul Watkins

Overview

It is 1921, and young Ben Sheridan's Irish-American father mysteriously dies in their small Rhode Island town. Determined to learn the truth about his family's cloudy past, he sets sail for Ireland, and quickly becomes involved in a struggle between soldiers of the newly formed Irish Republican Army and the brutal British troops. Amidst the lush and rugged Irish countryside, and the horrible violence unfolding across it, Ben must search for the truth of his identity, and the ties of his family's blood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312267667
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	11/04/2000
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Paul Watkins is the author of many novels, including The Forger, Archangel, and Night over Day over Night, as well as the memoir Stand Before Your God. He attended the Dragon School at Eton and Yale, and currently lives with his family in Princeton, New Jersey, where he teaches at the Peddie School and Lawrenceville Academy.

Editorial Reviews

Superbly crafted...Myth and archetype are all over the place in The Promise of Light, as real as the craving for independence or the hills of Connemara.” —The Boston Globe

“Watkins is a territic writer...His books are lucid, intelligent and shamelessly entertaining, written in lean, evocative prose and displaying an uncommon delight in storytelling.” —Washington Post Book World

“A full-fashioned romantic...Watkins is aware of every burning cottage, every hedgerow ambush, every body thrown on the road - of the powerful emotional magic of that distance scene.” —The New Yorker

“Plaintive, beautifully realized.” —The Chicago Tribune

“The Promise of Light is that rare find, an action-packed book written in prose as sharp as the crack of rifle fire, as evocative as the smell of burning peat.” —The Providence Journal

From the Publisher

Watkins has outdone himself: this gifted young writer (In the Blue Light of African Dreams, etc.) has written his best yet—a successful fusion of a young man's quest for his origins with a harrowing account of the Troubles in Ireland (prior to independence in 1922). Ben Sheridan is the appealing hero and narrator. It's 1921; the Irish-American university graduate has landed his first job, with a Rhode Island bank, and his future seems assured. His mother died young, but Ben is close to his father Arthur, fire chief on Jamestown island. Then, an accident; Arthur needs blood, but the direct transfusion from Ben kills him. The doctor concludes that Arthur could not have been his natural father, and Ben, flabbergasted, is without a road map. Only by seeking out the truth in Ireland (his father seldom spoke of the old country) can Ben impose order on chaos. He takes a cargo ship to Galway. The cargo is guns, as Ben discovers when he is hustled ashore. The innocent Yankee (Watkins scrubs the stereotype clean as a whistle) finds himself in the middle of a war between the IRA and the notorious Black and Tans (British soldiers), a "local feud" with informers everywhere and atrocities on both sides. The British know about the guns and about a mysterious American they figure is Arthur Sheridan (another shock for Ben: his father was a former gun-runner who promised to return); so events push the reluctant Ben into the IRA camp. He does eventually learn the truth of his paternity, but he also learns the truth of his own irreducible essence as he kills two men, refuses to kill two others, and calculates the odds of his survival. Whether it's a peaceful domestic scene or hand-to-handcombat so real it hurts, Watkins's sure touch never falters. The joy comes from watching him find the right image, again and again and again. From start to finish, this is fine work.

Kirkus Reviews