[.ca] Forgive Me: A Novel (ISBN 0345494466)

PONDERING THE QUESTION OF FORGIVENESS AND REDEMPTION:
Following on the heels of her highly successful novels How To Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda Eyre Ward again explores timeless questions by tracing the journey of an unforgettable protagonist and placing her in contemporary settings. With an apartment in the Associated Press compound in Mexico City, which she hasn't seen in a month, Nadine Morgan is in pursuit of another story. After consulting her topographic map she drives toward a small village. She is alone, and has told no one where she is going. Stopping to ask directions she is confronted by a group of men who stare, hesitating only briefly before a tall man in a Cookie Monster T-shirt reaches into her car. In seconds the others are beating her, pounding her stomach, her rib cage. She is left to die in a ditch. It's understood that Nadine is tough, a hard nosed news hawk who will do anything, go anywhere for the all important story. Steeliness is accepted, but where is her sense? To drive into unknown terrain alone with no one knowing her whereabouts? Nonetheless, the next time she is fully aware she's at home in Woods Hole being tended to by her father and his girlfriend. She has a brief relationship with the doctor who sees to her, but what is love compared to a big story? As the narrative switches back and forth in time and place, we read that Nadine took her father to the Oyster Bar to tell him of her plan: "So I've decided," said Nadine. "I'm going to Cape Town." "Cape Town?" "I'll be freelancing, of course, but maybe it'll lead to a job with the AP, or the Times. People are fighting the pass laws, standing up to the government. Remember that kid from Nantucket? Jason Irving? He was killed outside Cape Town last month. Everything is changing in South Africa. There's so much to write about." Jim sighed. "That kid from Nantucket," he said. "Poor kid comes home in a coffin. This is your role model?" Nadine didn't find her death in Cape Town - what she found was heartbreak. Her lover, Maxim, a successful photographer, was killed while at the site of a gun battle, and Jason Irving, an American teacher, was killed by a young mob. Tragedy is all she discovered in Cape Town. Now, following Mexico it has been years since her first visit to Cape Town, and one of Jason's killers is scheduled for an amnesty hearing. Jason's parents are, understandably, furious, and fly to Cape Town to battle for justice for their son. Nadine also returns to South Africa, hoping to interview the parents. However, she had not considered what her feelings might be for the mother of one of the killers. Amanda Eyre Ward is a crafty author - she doesn't answer questions but tells a disquieting story, leaving it to the listener to ponder the age old questions of forgiveness and redemption. - Gail Cooke