An Affair of Honor
by Richard Marius
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Description
In this powerful novel—the capstone to Richard Marius’s illustrious career—a gripping double murder propels the small, Bible-obsessed town of Bourbonville, Tennessee, into connection with the wider society opening up in the years following World War II. At the center: Charles Alexander, twenty, groomed from birth by his mother to be a Baptist minister, teetering on the edge of his faith. In his last year of college, working late one night at the newspaper office, he accidentally show more witnesses the murders. The killer is Hope Kirby, World War II hero, member of a large mountain clan of farmers, who has discovered his wife’s infidelity. Although Kirby’s code of honor requires that he exact vengeance, it won’t allow him to kill an innocent bystander, and Charles goes free, promising not to tell what he’s seen. But Charles does tell, and we watch, fascinated, as a trial, an appeal, and a new terror unleashed on the countryside draw the entire county into the action. Among the people most closely involved: the skillful, overweight, hard-drinking lawyer for the defense; two Baptist preachers—one liberal, one a strict constructionist—each with a secret to hide; a lady banker determinedly headed for troub≤ a big-hearted good- old-boy sheriff; Charles’s disturbingly freewheeling, freethinking sometime college girlfriend. Most importantly, we see the Kirby clan: Pappy, whose extraordinary patience, hard work, and self-reliance cause his hardscrabble farm to prosper until he’s turned out by the coming of a national park; and the five Kirby sons, who are trying hard to make a new place for themselves in the town. As these and others play their parts in the affair of honor, we see Charles and the Kirbys begin to reexamine their dramatically opposing but equally encapsulated ways of viewing life—fundamentalist Christian and ancient “code of the hills.” And as the novel draws to its climactic and satisfying close, we see them—and finally the entire town—profoundly, permanently changed. show lessTags
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Author Information
8 Works 1,114 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2001
- Epigraph
- And the man that commiteth adultery with another man's wife, even he that he commiteth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteresss shall surely be put to death.
--Leviticus 20:10
But I say unto you, That whososever looketh on a woman with lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
--Matthew 5:28
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part int he lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second ... (show all)death.
--Revelation 21:8 - Dedication
- For my friends Jean and David Layzer
- First words
- Years afterwards when an aging Charles Alexander held his newborn granddaughter in his arms and looked through the window of the hospital room towards distant trees along the Charles, he thought, If Hope Kirby had not spar... (show all)ed my life, this child would never have been born.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It was finally all over.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3563 .A66 .A67 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1961-
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 27
- Popularity
- 950,801
- Rating
- (5.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
