A Prayer for the Dying

I loved this book!
Good versus evil. Struggles of faith and sanity. With the focus on disease and death, you wouldn't think this is the type of book that might be considered "unputdownable." Yet it comes very, very close. O'Nan draws us in and keeps us riveted as Hansen struggles with his own ghosts, fears, and emotions as he seeks to fulfill his duties to his family, his community and neighboring areas. Part of the power comes from A Prayer for the Dying being written in second personal singular. Although Hansen is relating the story, he refers to himself as "you," such as, "You've been in the business long enough to understand grief." This unique perspective had me doing and experiencing as much as Hansen. At the core of the book is show more the internal struggle that is created by choices and Hansen's own struggle of faith. Should he and the town's doctor impose a quarantine, given the twin threats of diphtheria and fire? If so, when? Should he use his knowledge of the fact that a couple of outsiders have died of diphtheria to send his wife and infant daughter away for safety's sake while not telling anyone else? What risks do his jobs pose his family and anyone else with whom he comes in contact? Why has God beset him and his town with plague and fire? O'Nan packs this all into less than 200 pages of highly readable prose. If you haven't read this novel before, you are missing something very special. If you've already read it, it is unquestionably worth reading again - and again. show less

Stewart O'Nan can write rings around almost anybody. He can take the banal (closing a Red Lobster on the outskirts of a mall) and make it interesting. His writing is never showy, even when it could be, and he tends to use as few words as he can get away with, never embellishing unnecessarily. With A Prayer for the Dying, O'Nan piles one terrible situation after another on top of despair and makes a hopeful novel out of it all.

Jacob Hansen is undertaker, sheriff and preacher to the small town of Friendship, Wisconsin. He's a veteran of the Civil War, fighting memories with a devotion to duty, faith and a deep love for his wife and infant daughter. He's asked to come remove a body found on a farmer's land and as he's hauling the body show more away, he finds a woman, ill, by the side of the road. He delivers both to the doctor and finds himself at the beginning point of an epidemic that will challenge everything he believes.

This book is described as a cross between Stephen Crane and Stephen King, and there is a sense of horror piling on horror in this book, despite the absence of the supernatural. Jacob is the best of protagonists; a deeply thoughtful man of action and integrity, as aware of his own weaknesses as he is compassionate of the people around him. O'Nan has chosen the second person in which to tell the story, which was the only choice for this book; the first person would have brought the suffering so close as to be unreadable, and the third person would have provided a comfortable remove. show less

As I was reading this little novel, especially toward its end, I kept thinking to myself, "Oh, the horror." Because in A PRAYER FOR THE DYING there are indeed horrifying events depicted in the most stark and brutal terms. Jacob Hansen is, it seems, a good and decent man who has been taxed to the limits of his humanity, not once but twice. The first time was during his service in the Civil War when his unit was under siege by the Confederate army. Outmanned, out of ammunition and food, he and his mates were reduced to eating the raw flesh of their horses as they took cover inside the animals' rib cages. And when the horse flesh was gone, even worse measures were taken by the surviving Union soldiers. Here I was reminded of Vardis show more Fisher's novel of the Donner party, THE MOTHERS. And once again, "Oh, the horror."

There are strongly gothic elements to O'Nan's novel, a story which has been whittled down and then whittled down even more to the barest essentials of what makes really good story-telling. I am sure it was no accident that the protagonist here holds three jobs or responsibilities in the community of Friendship, Wisconsin, just a few years after the war: constable, preacher and undertaker. All of these callings converge in the most horrifying ways as a diptheria epidemic requires harsh and inhuman measures in attempts to prevent its spread outside the town. Nearly all of the niceties of civilized society are abandoned as Friendships citizens continue to sicken and die at an alarming rate and Jacob tries desperately to maintain some sense of order and decency. But he is unable to save even his own family. His faith is severely tested, his sanity snaps, and yet he continues to try to do what is right, up to and including burning homes with their plague victims inside. And then, perhaps a last straw, a wild forest fire sweeps across the area, burning and killing everything in its path. Here, I thought of the song lyric, "God sent a fire not a flood this time." Because it all really does seem like "the final days." There is even a community of religious fanatics in "the colony" just outside of town which perhaps emphasizes this theme.

War, cannibalism, necrophilia, murder, pestilence and plague. Intimations and stark depictions of all these things and more, along with the memorable character of an overwhelmed Jake Hansen, make A PRAYER FOR THE DYING a gripping page-turner which will cause you to wince in horror much of the time. And all these elements in less than 200 pages. In more ways than one, this is one HELL of a book.

Since I recently read an earlier O'Nan novel, THE NAMES OF THE DEAD, I found it interesting that both books have as their heroes damaged war veterans and cast their particular wars as significant and frightening backdrops. One other particularly interesting method which O'Nan employs here is the use of the second person voice throughout, a highly unusual thing in fiction. But it is an extremely effective grammatical device in that it draws 'you' the reader even more deeply into the story as it develops. Maybe that's why I kept thinking - and 'you' will too - "Oh, the horror!"

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Wow. This one packed a punch. I'm keeping this one, as it's worth a re-read someday.

This book is a rarity -- a book written in second person, present tense, that actually works. In fact, it flowed so naturally, I was halfway through the first chapter before I noticed, and even after that it didn't distract me. It was appropriate, as it eventually wasn't evident whether anyone would survive to tell the story past-tense.

Jacob is the constable of Friendship, Wisconsin, shortly after the Civil War. He is also the local undertaker, as well as the town preacher. All these callings will come into play, for better or for worse, after a dead soldier and a severely ill woman from a religious commune are found. Doc's verdict is that they are show more victims of diphtheria. Soon, the disease is spreading. To make matters worse, a forest fire is raging nearby -- and headed their way.

We experience Jacob's life as the town and his mind gradually descend into chaos. It is a disturbing, and sometimes confusing, picture. Jacob and Doc make a number of questionable decisions early on that lead to even more tragic decisions later.

At 195 pages (at least, for my trade paperback edition) this is not a long book, but it is intense and not for the faint-hearted. It is an amazing journey into a hellish situation. show less

While I can see that A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan is an amazing and imaginative story, I wasn’t all that fond of this story of grief and suffering. I think it probably hit a little too close to home as it was so easy to compare what the small town of Friendship, Wisconsin was going through with it’s diphtheria epidemic and what we are facing with the Covid-19 virus.

Jacob’s story is harrowing, he and his small family settled in this town after the American Civil War, he has become the town’s undertaker, sheriff and preacher and so he has to face this disease on so many levels. It is heart-breaking that he quietly goes about his township duties, all the while we know that he has become totally unhinged by grief and show more despair. To make matters even darker, there is a wild fire racing through the north woods coming straight for the town.

A Prayer for the Dying is very bleak yet it is beautifully written. It reminded me at times of a bible story, where the main character must make major life decisions for others but the choices are so limited that there really isn’t a right or wrong thing to do. Had I read this at a different time, I would probably be raving about it, but unfortunately, amid the stress and tragedy that is happening in our world today, the spiritual and philosophical questions that it raises didn’t really sink into my consciousness. show less

It is shortly after the end of the American Civil War in Friendship, Wisconsin. As the sheriff, preacher and undertaker, Jacob is in charge of the physical, moral and spiritual welfare of the his town. But when the town is threatened first by disease, then fire, he realizes that safeguarding the town and its citizens is beyond a man’s control.

A Prayer for the Dying is a quiet novel of creeping horror, as death creeps and then roars through Friendship, and Jacob strives grimly to stave it off. In the process, he finds himself questioning everything he believes, even to the bedrock of his faith, that the world is ultimately a beautiful place. This book is haunting, evocative of a time and place, as well as of a man’s character.

This is the kind of novel you end a little stunned. I have a friend whose literary tastes I greatly respect, a gifted writer herself, who raved about O'Nan to me--this is the first novel of his I've ever read, but won't be the last. She actually gave me her copy of this book when I mentioned I couldn't find it in stores. It was recommended in a horror recommendation list, and my friend expressed surprise it would be thought of that way.

Having now read it I understand what she means. Inside a blurb boasts this won the International Horror Guild Novel of the Year. But this reads more like literary fiction in its prose style, and there's not a whiff of the supernatural in content. The monster roaming the small Wisconsin town of Friendship, show more Wisconsin in 1871 isn't a vampire, a werewolf or zombie--it's diphtheria.

This story is in the rare second person, through the perspective of Jacob Hansen, a union civil war veteran who acts as the town's sheriff, pastor and undertaker. I have another writer friend who considers second person a gimmick and unbearable to read. The thing is I can't imagine this story written any other way. Telling this story through first person or third would be too normal, sound too down home. But something about that second person voice tells us there's something a bit askew from the beginning. Second person, especially given it's always in present tense, almost always sounds lyrical. Somehow, O'Nan's prose is more muscular than that. It's the kind often described as "spare." A lot of sentence fragments and short declarative sentences. It comes across as more stark than spare considering the tone and the short novel--I'd say it's no more than about 60,000 words--reads very quickly; I read it in almost one sitting.

The novel is harrowing. That deceptively simple seeming style doesn't spare you the horror of the epidemic or how it unravels Jacob's mind, heart and spirit. Indeed, there's an aspect to the book that might be too much for many, that pushed it over the line (and some might find over the top) into the grotesque, and for me saved only by the restraint of the writing. I think the blurb from the Wall Street Journal review got it right: As eloquent as it is unsettling. show less