The war back home

War is hell, not just for the soldiers but also for their families back home. This point is driven home by Tim Farrington in his excellent 2005 novel Lizzie’s War.

Mike O’Reilly served first in the Korean War. Now a decade and a half later and promoted to captain, he’s in Vietnam fighting another hopeless Asian war. We get glimpses of him in action there, but Farrington’s focus falls mostly on his pregnant wife, Liz, who already has four children to raise alone. They are a good Catholic family, a fact that is key to the plot at several points, such as when a young priest falls in love with Liz.

Mike may place fighting a war ahead of his family and spend most of the novel on the opposite side of the world, yet this is essentially a love story. We read their tender letters to each other, although neither is candid about what they are going through, him with the full extent of his injuries, she with the difficulties of her pregnancy. Sometimes love means not telling the whole truth.

Farrington, as in his bestseller The Monk Downstairs, has a gift for writing sentences that one wants to reread, then reread again. Here’s a sample in a passage about the priest and a dying man: “He gave his wife a glance, lingering and tender, almost apologetic, then closed his eyes ad sank into his suffering.”

If you've read The Monk Downstairs and are looking for another novel with the same blend of spirituality and romance, give Lizzie's War a try.