HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD

By Kathleen T. Choi,

You know a movie's a hit when the audience remains sitting while the credits roll. A great novel affects me the same way. I'm silently awed by the gift of a powerful story. Michael O'Brien wowed me with Father Elijah (now available in paperback) and now stuns me with Eclipse of the Sun. In an earlier tale, Strangers and Sojourners, the Delaney family acquired a newspaper in Swiftcreek, British Columbia. The current editor views the growing misuse of Canada's "hate crime" laws with alarm. Since you can't speak ill of anyone, you can't call abortion "murder," you can't expose corruption, and you can't criticize the government.

Phony charges send the Delaneys fleeing to the mountains, except for estranged wife Maya and her youngest child Arrow. They live in a commune involved in drug dealing and possibly Satanism. When a secret government militia attacks the camp, Arrow flees, assisted by Father Andrei. This priest survived the Holocaust and recognizes the signs of fascism in the Canadian government. His task is to reunite Arrow with his family. He launches the young boy on an epic journey, both physically and spiritually. The two discover that God is bringing a blessing out of the current oppression. People who never took religion seriously are now wondering why the government seems so threatened by it, especially Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism. They're forced to realize their choices have moral and possibly fatal consequences. Surprising characters choose to die for God rather than capitulate to government intimidation.

This novel is rich in characters. In addition to Arrow, one of the most believable young boys I've met in books, and Father Andrei, there are the Wannamakers, suspicious of the media's silence on events they know occured. Their daughter Julie and her family have decided to take a long cruise away from Canada, while the parents opt for a trailer tour of America. Potempko, another old European priest, has lost his parish to "progressive" elements but finds more and more Indians seeking his spiritual advice. Alice, Queen of Junque, claims to be amoral, but she rescues a hydrocephalic child from a government dumpster, and she willingly shelters Arrow. The Potters, Alice's evangelical neighbors, have spent years of love trying to convert Alice only to find themselves in trouble with the law for their charity. A formerly moderate archbishop begins to question the direction of Church "reforms."

The villains are mostly faceless, except for Maurice L'Oraison, who loved the first Mrs. Delaney but has sold his soul to escape the poverty and provincialism of Swiftcreek. Father Andrei's struggle to rescue L'Oraison's soul resembles the Grand Inquisitor section in The Brothers Karamazov, a section of philosophy that forces you to think. Like most epics, this is a long book, but I wouldn't cut one page.