Bright’s Passage

The concussive shock of the first shell hitting the church was the only one Bright actually felt. After that came the now-familiar feeling of capsized calm in which the world seemed viewed from beneath a great depth of water. It was as if all sound and feeling were gone suddenly, and, within that watery silence, death was not something hurtled from above but more like a meadow of wildflowers that blossomed from the ground in radii of plaster, mud, and dust, swallowing buildings and bodies, chewing them in the air a while and then spitting them back out upon the trammeled ground like the ends of gnawed bones. When the flowers finally stopped blossoming, the earth lay back down again and the senses returned.

Henry Bright, a World War I veteran, has brought two things home with him from France. An intricately carved German gun, and an angel (apparently shaken free from the beautifully painted ceiling of the lovely church mentioned above, when it is destroyed). The angel has now inhabited the body of his horse, and sets about giving Bright advice he hopes will bring a new King of Heaven to power. The angel isn’t at all convinced that the current King of Heaven is doing such a hot job, given the death and mayhem of the war and all. Bright resents the pushy nature of the angel, always telling him what to do, especially since some of the commands don’t turn out well at all. “Marry the girl next door, she will give birth to the King of Heaven”, never warning him that she will die in childbirth. “Bury her quickly, and set the house on fire”, never warning him that setting the house on fire will cause a huge forest fire, from which he will have to flee. Bright doesn’t know whether to trust the angel or not, but since the angel did save him a time or ten while at war in France, he decides to mostly listen to its advice.

Bright, his infant son, his horse/angel, and his goat set out on their journey through the backwoods of West Virginia, trying to stay two steps ahead of the fire, and at least one step ahead of his wife’s father (the self titled ‘Colonel’), whose sole mission in life is to make Bright pay for stealing his daughter away.

This was a lovely, lyrical book, full of cruelty and the horrors of war, and love and tenderness as well. I picked it up at an actual bookstore (so few around nowadays) in Santa Cruz, admittedly because it has a horse on the cover, and I wondered if Josh Ritter might be related to the late John Ritter. I guess I’m the last person around who doesn’t know of Josh Ritter, the musician.

The reviews I read were mixed. Some fans of his music loved it because they loved him. Others hated it because they expected better from such a talented lyricist. So I guess I’m glad that I didn’t know who he was, and that I came to the book because of the horse on the cover. I really loved the book, though it left a lot of questions completely unanswered. I hope he writes more novels in the future.