Dayspring: A Novel
by Harry Sylvester
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Description
Spencer Bain is a modern man of science, a university anthropologist doing fieldwork in a small New Mexican town. Used to long separations from his wife, a UCLA professor equally dedicated to her career, he is mostly untroubled by his infidelities, and hers; that is, until now. In order to study the religious practices of the Penitentes, a brotherhood of local men who engage in severe, medieval penances, Bain feigns a conversion to Catholicism and participates in their Lenten observances, show more including their dramatic public procession on Good Friday. Nothing in Bain's skeptical academic training has prepared him for the profound remorse that he begins to experience. Though no sentimentalist with respect to the poor and ignorant who surround him, he cannot help but contrast the simple yet solid lives of the men and women he studies with his own fruitless relationships and those of the jaded, over-sexed sophisticates -- the self-proclaimed artists and intellectuals -- he considers his peers. Artistically descriptive of the rugged Southwest and the people who dwell there, the novel also movingly portrays the inner landscape of a man coming to grips with his need for redemption. Author Harry Sylvester masterfully illustrates both the objective reality and the subjective experience of guilt and grace. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Pretty brutal look at the Penitentes-a cultish offshoot in SW USA that partakes in brutal practices of penance. Also looking at morality and how easy it is to just float along in life not thinking about eternal consequences. Shows the elite academia class in all their snobbish pride.
Dayspring is a 1945 novel that tells the story of a cynical anthropologist in New Mexico who fakes a conversion to Christianity in order to gain access to the Penitentes brotherhood for his research. However, once he starts down that path, he finds his life going in directions he never thought possible.
An interesting novel about coming to terms with life choices and the power of penance. For those with an interest in New Mexican culture and midcentury Catholic novels.
An interesting novel about coming to terms with life choices and the power of penance. For those with an interest in New Mexican culture and midcentury Catholic novels.
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Lists
1940s
221 works; 25 members
Fiction For Men
142 works; 11 members
Author Information
3+ Works 49 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1945
- Important places
- New Mexico, USA
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Christian Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.52 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1900-1945
- LCC
- PS3537 .Y537 .D39 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 41
- Popularity
- 716,546
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 2
