Seeking time away from his job at the University of Chicago,
Nathan Price is taking a sabbatical to finish his novel, but
when he receives a journal written in the seventeenth
century, his plans change. The journal belonged to Esther
Porter who was hanged during the Salem Witch trials in 1692.
At the back of her journal is a love letter written by Jamie
Mackinnon, Nathan's best friend who disappeared six months
ago. None of this makes sense, and the only clue Nathan has
to Jamie's disappearance is a brief mention of Carthage,
Wisconsin. Could Nathan's best friend really have traveled
through time, and if he did, can Nathan find a way to bring
his friend home again?
Carthage is not at all what Nathan expected. The townspeople
are hiding something about Jamie's disappearance, but Nathan
can't help but fall in love with the serenity of the place.
In Carthage, he's finally found a place he can be himself,
and he's found a woman who might be able to accept him as he
is. When other people begin to disappear, Nathan must do
what he can to find his missing friend and save the woman
he's come to love.
AUTUMN IN CARTHAGE by Christopher Zenos is a book about
time-travel, mysterious disappearances, and finding
sanctuary from a world that doesn't accept those who are
"different." On the whole, what is an interesting concept
is buried beneath a self-indulgent, sarcastic, and an un-
empathetic protagonist. This character goes so far as to say
that readers only want likable characters because reality is
too ugly and that novels written now pander to people's need
to escape into a fairy tale world. This is inaccurate and so
frustrating that I had to set the book down carefully and
walk away.
First, there is a difference between likable, sympathetic
characters and characters who are empathetic. Sympathetic
means I understand the struggles but cannot feel them as my
own. I look at these characters, likable or not, and feel
sorry for what is happening to them, but I am removed from
it. It is not my pain or emotions. This creates unwanted
distance between the protagonist's struggle and the reader.
An empathetic character is one I root for to win because it
means that I feel that victory as my own.
There are characters who are not nice, who are not likable
but who are truly empathetic. They're compelling because
they're complex and real. Perfect examples are Alex DeLarge
in A Clockwork Orange and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the
Lambs. These men are evil, depraved, and scary. They are
perfectly wretched human beings, but they are fascinating
characters; their victories and defeats will feel like the
reader's victories and defeats. That's my opinion of good
writing.
AUTUMN IN CARTHAGE by Christopher Zenos is obviously a labor
of love for the author. Unfortunately, the underlying
worldview expressed in this novel is so radically different
than mine that I struggled to finish it. I couldn't connect
with the main character and because of this the plot read
achingly slow. I can't recommend AUTUMN IN CARTHAGE, but
that doesn't mean other readers won't like it.
Nathan Price is a college professor with crippling
impairments, seeking escape from his prison of necessity.
One day, in a package of seventeenth-century documents from
Salem Village, he stumbles across a letter by his best
friend, Jamie, who had disappeared six months before. The
document is dated 1692—the height of the Witch Trials. The
only potential lead: a single mention of Carthage, a tiny
town in the Wisconsin northern highland.
The mystery catapults Nathan from Chicago to the Wisconsin
wilderness. There, he meets Alanna, heir to an astonishing
Mittel-European legacy of power and sacrifice. In her, and
in the gentle townsfolk of Carthage, Nathan finds the refuge
for which he has long yearned. But Simon, the town elder, is
driven by demons of his own, and may well be entangled in
Jamie's disappearance and that of several Carthaginians. As
darkness stretches toward Alanna, Nathan may have no choice
but to risk it all...
Moving from the grimness of Chicago's South Side to the
Wisconsin hinterlands to seventeenth-century Salem, this is
a story of love, of sacrifice, of terrible passions—and of
two wounded souls quietly reaching for the deep peace of
sanctuary.
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