An Affair of Honor

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

A wonderful book, on a par with the work of Ferrol Sams and T.R.Pearson, set in Bourbonville, Tennessee (a fictionalizedLenoir City) 25 miles SW of Knoxville. An excellent sense ofplace and time, the third book in a trilogy starting with TheComing of Rain (Bourbonville in 1885) and followed by After theWar (Bourbonville 1917-1927 or so). Affair of Honor takes placein the mid-1950s and after (saying when might give away some ofthe plot)--characters, children and grandchildren of charactersfrom the other two novels appear here. In many ways this is therichest and most tapestried of the three books. As with thebooks of Ferrol Sams and T.R. Pearson, this is one you lookforward to rereading a year from now.

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.