Absolution

Author: Miriam Herin
Publisher: Novello Festival Press, Charlotte (2007 Novello Literary Award winner)
ISBN-13: 9780976096399
Website: miriamherin.com

Absolution is the story of Maggie Delaney, an idealistic wife and mother whose world implodes when her husband is murdered in a seemingly random act. When Maggie attempts to find out what really happened, her search leads her back to her Carolina roots and through the streets of modern-day Boston. In the jungles of Southeast Asia, she uncovers a legacy of secrets about the man she thought she knew -- and the troubled world they shared as they came of age together.

Reviews and comments:

Publishers Weekly: "This impressive Novello Literary Award-winning debut skillfully combines a contemporary courtroom thriller with a subtle look back at the competing passions and pressures of the Vietnam War era...."

Raleigh News & Observer: "....grips and holds like popular fiction, but its themes and complexity encourage the reader to slow down .... Absolution is not history, but maybe something better than history: an account that gathers many threads and shows in unmistakable fashion how extraordinary times change people, and how the consequences of one's actions can come decades after the actions."

Clyde Edgertron: "Absolution delicately and skillfully depicts an anguished clash between secrets and justice in the heart of Maggie Delaney, a grieving widow. In the process, it also casts a beguiling and suspenseful net back across five decades -- dropping the reader into nightmarish battles in Vietnam and also into backrooms of the 60s U.S. peace movement. Miriam Herin has written a big story, compelling and suspenseful, bringing home consequences of war and misguided love, as they refuse to stay where we might like them to stay-in the past. The Novello Literary Award has published another winner."