North: A Novel

Brad Kessler's North is one of those books that sneaks up on you. Worlds collide in this book, but the pacing is strangely gentle. Much of the action takes place at a Vermont monastery, which may explain the pace. This world is quiet, not free of responsibly, but structured and predictable with a mix of companionship and solitude. Brother Christopher, elected abbot relatively recently, is uneasily adjusting to his new responsibilities.

Another of the colliding worlds is Mogadishu, Somalia, which Sahro leaves after the killing of yet another family member in the ongoing conflict. Her cousin had dreamed of making the long journey to Europe. Sahro decides she will make the journey instead, but her family decides Sahro will be better off show more seeking asylum in the U.S. They pool their resources to send Sahro and another cousin to South America whence they undertake the long journey, mostly on foot, to the U.S.'s southern border. When Sahro steps across the U.S. border, telling the first customs agent she encounters that she is seeking asylum, she is whisked away to a New Jersey detention center. (This is made clear early in the novel, so it's not a spoiler.)

After nearly two years in detention, Sahro is granted the right to a credible fear hearing, but her case is assigned to a judge known to approve fewer than 2% of asylum cases. Now flight to Canada seems her best option. It's on this journey that she finds herself at Brother Christopher's monastery, where the welcome from the community is uneven. Brother Christopher sees her as a figure similar to the holy family—unwillingly journeying from her home because of the threat of violence. Other monks shy away from the political ramifications of hosting a refugee, an act that may be prosecuted as a crime. The story is a bit more complicated that this, but I'm trying to write a review, not a summary.

Kessler has given readers a small, remarkable cast of characters who search for "home" of one kind or another and who are acutely aware of feeling ill at ease where they find themselves. The inner lives of these characters are fascinating, inspiring, and humbling. Sahro's struggles to sustain herself through times of almost unthinkable deprivation via her practice of Islam. Brother Christopher wrestles with the question of how to serve a world he has deliberately withdrawn from.

Reading North is a contemplative journey, one well worth undertaking. Buy or borrow a copy of this novel and join the flights and pilgrimages of its characters.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. show less

The Publisher Says: A powerfully moving novel about the intertwined lives of a Vermont monk, a Somali refugee, and an Afghan war veteran by the author of the acclaimed memoir Goat Song

As a late spring blizzard brews, Brother Christopher, a cloistered monk at Blue Mountain Monastery in Vermont, rushes to tend to his Ida Red and Northern Spy apple trees in advance of the unseasonal snowstorm. When the storm lands a young Somali refugee, Sahro Abdi Muse, at the monastery, Christopher is pulled back into the world as his life intersects with Sahro’s and that of an Afghan war veteran in surprising and revealing ways.

North traces the epic journey of Sahro from her home in Somalia to South America, along the migrant route through Central show more America and Mexico, to New York City, and finally, her dangerous attempt to continue north to safety in Canada. It also compellingly traces the inner journeys of Brother Christopher, questioning his future in a world where the monastery way of life is waning, and of veteran Teddy Fletcher, seeking a way to make peace with his past.

Written in Brad Kessler’s sharp, beautiful, and observant prose, and grounded in the author’s own corner of Vermont, where there is a Carthusian monastery, a vibrant community of Somali asylum seekers, and a hole left after a disproportionate number of Vermont soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, North gives voice to these invisible communities, delivering a story of human connection in a time of displacement.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY> THANK YOU>

My Review: I'm sure you've seen the reviews with fours and fives of stars around. It was my Goodreads friend Sarah-Hope's five-star warble of delight that brought into focus my three-star dissatisfaction with this well-written read.

A book about the refugee experience is, of necessity, a book in motion, a book of change and danger. There is a lot of literary precedent for this structure, from the original picaresque [Don Quixote] to the eternal shame-making [Twelve Years a Slave], on through [West with the Night]'s risky but voluntary peregrinations, [In Patagonia]'s curiosity-propelled diggings. But the issue with North is that this structure crashes into the wildly different voyages of Father Christopher (also the name of the Catholic saint, patron of travelers) to the contemplation's deepest coves and Sahro's fear- and death-driven flight.

While I'm in the greatest possible sympathy with this novel's aims, I am not convinced that Author Kessler handled this crash with a convincing direction for these two characters to meet as opposed to collide. The core relationship of these people wasn't made into a meeting of like minds, but a compassionate man offering charity to a desperate woman in terrifying danger that she need not have suffered in a properly ordered US.

So while I read the book without pain (Author Kessler does craft a handsome image...Father Christopher "...reached the rise, his shoulders relaxed. In the warmth of the morning he saw the slopes white with blossoms. The apples carpeted in blooms," after a tense and fearful bout of worry about a freeze), I was left feeling that the travels inwards and outwards weren't brought to the same place at the same pitch of emotion. It meant I felt that I was led, steered, pushed, nudged; I wanted to feel that, after all the movement, I was somewhere I hadn't been before...but there was only more travel ahead.

All US royalties are to be donated to a refugee-aiding charity. Please factor that into your Holiday purchasing plans. show less