An Affair of Honor

Rating:
Summary: A Thrilling, Fast-Paced Legal Drama Not To Be Missed!
Review: A Murder Of Honor is a fast-paced legal drama not to be missed! It will have the reader swiftly turning the pages--the 3rd book in this compelling trilogy by the the 'late' great storyteller Richard Marius. The story will take the reader back in time to the '50's where a W.W.II hero kills his unfaithful wife-- the witness, a young man soon to become a man of the cloth-- a question of right or wrong pursues on the much debated issue 'the oath of silence'...

Rating:
Summary: fine storytelling
Review: A wonderful book, on a par with the work of Ferrol Sams and T.R.
Pearson, set in Bourbonville, Tennessee (a fictionalized
Lenoir City) 25 miles SW of Knoxville. An excellent sense of
place and time, the third book in a trilogy starting with The
Coming of Rain (Bourbonville in 1885) and followed by After the
War (Bourbonville 1917-1927 or so). Affair of Honor takes place
in the mid-1950s and after (saying when might give away some of
the plot)--characters, children and grandchildren of characters
from the other two novels appear here. In many ways this is the
richest and most tapestried of the three books. As with the
books of Ferrol Sams and T.R. Pearson, this is one you look
forward to rereading a year from now.

Rating:
Summary: fine storytelling
Review: A wonderful book, on a par with the work of Ferrol Sams and T.R.
Pearson, set in Bourbonville, Tennessee (a fictionalized
Lenoir City) 25 miles SW of Knoxville. An excellent sense of
place and time, the third book in a trilogy starting with The
Coming of Rain (Bourbonville in 1885) and followed by After the
War (Bourbonville 1917-1927 or so). Affair of Honor takes place
in the mid-1950s and after (saying when might give away some of
the plot)--characters, children and grandchildren of characters
from the other two novels appear here. In many ways this is the
richest and most tapestried of the three books. As with the
books of Ferrol Sams and T.R. Pearson, this is one you look
forward to rereading a year from now.

Rating:
Summary: There are not enough stars for this book.
Review: From the first paragraph of "An Affair of Honor," you know you are in the hands of a master. The people who live in it, the dazzling structure that compells you from page to page, and the challenging and exciting intelligence author Richard Marius brought to the issues covered in the novel remind us of why we read fiction.

Richard Marius died in 1999, and it seemed that there would be ever again be anything by him to experience. His 1993 "After the War" is one of the five best novels I have ever read in a lifetime of book-loving. I envy anyone who gets to sit down with it for the first time.

Marius wrote about the imaginary town of Bourbonville, Tennessee. While "After the War" dealt with post World War I, "An Affair of Honor" is placed in the decade after World War II.

Twenty-year-old Charles Alexander leaves work late one night and witnesses a man he knows killing two people, one of them the man's own wife. Hope Kirby sees Charles and puts the muzzle of the gun to the boy's forehead. But he does not kill him. He lets Charles go after the terrified divinity student promises not to tell anyone what he has seen. The sheriff knows Charles would have been near the place of the killings at the time they happened, and the shattered young man cannot withold the truth.

Should he have lied? Charles, who has lost his faith and is wracked by the loss of his own innocence is not sure. Blurting out the truth to the sheriff came from someplace so deep, so organic, that it could not be held back. Yet, his heart goes out to Hope Kirby, a war hero from the back hills, and he knows that he broke the promise that saved his life.

Questions of truth, faith, promises, war, and madness dog all the characters in the book, who must work them out in order to go on. So confident was Marius in his characters and the compelling questions he raised that he dared to put Hope's trial in the middle of the book, if for no other reason than to show us that it was not the climax of the story at all. "An Affair of Honor" is impossible to stop reading, and then hard to stop thinking about. A brilliant novel and a fine end to an exemplary writing career.

Rating:
Summary: A big novel of big ideas.
Review: Thepageturner's review (below) inspired me to get this book, and Marius's hypnotic writing kept me reading it, almost non-stop. This is a huge, panoramic novel of 1950's Tennessee, set in Bourbonville, also the setting for After the War, and involving later generations of some of the same families. Hope Kirby's killing of his wife and her lover start the spiralling action in this thoughtful, but exciting, novel and provide the forum for the author's extended study of the different ways we define justice and seek retribution.

Charles Alexander, a college student and newspaper reporter who accidentally witnesses the double murder, escapes being executed by Kirby only because he promises not to tell what he's seen. Charles, however, eventually becomes overwhelmed with guilt and confesses to the sheriff that he was a witness. While this action might seem on the surface to be clearly a correct action, it is not so simple in Bourbonville, where many believe the "code of the hills" is inviolate and Charles's breaking of his word of honor to be a serious betrayal. Even the clergy get in on the action, some advocating that he retract his statement, and Charles finds himself with few friends and even fewer supporters.

Plenty of drama, and even melodrama, keep the reader going, and the pages fly by, as we become totally caught up in the plot and in the lives of the characters, all of whom face demons of some sort. Marius is a master of keeping mysteries alive and making us understand and care for these characters, even those we dislike or consider misguided, because he makes us share their experiences, often through flashbacks. The complexities of religious faith, which we see as Charles and many other characters battle their doubts, are brought into sharp focus as we also share the traumas many characters have experienced during World War II, traumas still affecting both their earthly and spiritual lives. Marius takes on the big questions and provides a fascinating novel in which love and justice sometimes seem ineffable goals in a society which often honors tradition and shared community values far more than humanity and individual worth. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: A big novel of big ideas.
Review: Thepageturner's review (below) inspired me to get this book, and Marius's hypnotic writing kept me reading it, almost non-stop. This is a huge, panoramic novel of 1950's Tennessee, set in Bourbonville, also the setting for After the War, and involving later generations of some of the same families. Hope Kirby's killing of his wife and her lover start the spiralling action in this thoughtful, but exciting, novel and provide the forum for the author's extended study of the different ways we define justice and seek retribution.

Charles Alexander, a college student and newspaper reporter who accidentally witnesses the double murder, escapes being executed by Kirby only because he promises not to tell what he's seen. Charles, however, eventually becomes overwhelmed with guilt and confesses to the sheriff that he was a witness. While this action might seem on the surface to be clearly a correct action, it is not so simple in Bourbonville, where many believe the "code of the hills" is inviolate and Charles's breaking of his word of honor to be a serious betrayal. Even the clergy get in on the action, some advocating that he retract his statement, and Charles finds himself with few friends and even fewer supporters.

Plenty of drama, and even melodrama, keep the reader going, and the pages fly by, as we become totally caught up in the plot and in the lives of the characters, all of whom face demons of some sort. Marius is a master of keeping mysteries alive and making us understand and care for these characters, even those we dislike or consider misguided, because he makes us share their experiences, often through flashbacks. The complexities of religious faith, which we see as Charles and many other characters battle their doubts, are brought into sharp focus as we also share the traumas many characters have experienced during World War II, traumas still affecting both their earthly and spiritual lives. Marius takes on the big questions and provides a fascinating novel in which love and justice sometimes seem ineffable goals in a society which often honors tradition and shared community values far more than humanity and individual worth.

Rating:
Summary: AN EXCITING AND EXACTING LEGAL DRAMA
Review: This gripping and challenging novel, the third in a trilogy set in fictional Bourbonville, Tennessee, was completed shortly before the author's death in 1999. It is a story that poses questions of honor and inquires into the difference between right and wrong.

It is the 1950s and Bourbonville is a deeply religious community, almost obsessed by biblical injunctions and fundamentalism. Hope Kirby, a man of the hills and a World War II hero, follows his moral imperative when he murders his unfaithful wife and her lover. The slayings are accidentally witnessed by 20-year-old Charles Alexander, a college senior and soon to be Baptist minister.

While Hope's conscience enables him to exact deathly vengeance it will not allow him to kill an innocent, so he spares Charles after exacting a promise that the young man will never tell what he has seen.

But Charles is unable to keep his vow, and soon the town is a caldron of fear and reprisals.

Did Hope have a right to kill his unfaithful wife as an ancient code of the hills dictates? Was Charles wrong to break his oath of silence? It seems that everyone from Charles's liberated college girlfriend to the Kirby clan headed by Pappy to rival Baptist preachers has a secret to hide. All have a role in this affair of honor.

A trail ensues. Although his guilt is evident, Hope is a war hero and there is strong sympathy on his side. Charles, on the other hand, must contend with very personal faith issues.

Richard Marius has penned an exciting and exacting legal drama peopled with characters perceptively drawn.