A Land Without Sin A Novel edition by Paula Huston Literature Fiction eBooks
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As revolutionary forces gather in the Lacandon jungle of southern Mexico in the fall of 1993, an idealistic American priest vanishes from his post in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. The Church, immersed in trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the escalating conflict between wealthy landowners and poverty-stricken indigenas, remains strangely silent in the face of his disappearance. When his sister, Eva, only thirty-four but already a hardened battlefield photojournalist, finds out what's going on, she flies to Central America to find him, taking a job assisting a taciturn Dutch Mayanist in order to provide herself with a cover. But as it turns out, he, too, is on a secret quest. From the great pyramids of Tikal and the graceful palaces of Palenque to the shadowy guerrilla camps of the vast Lacandon, A Land Without Sin is a modern-day journey into the heart of darkness.
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Summer Books 2013
"In A Land Without Sin Paula Huston has written a novel that's wise and wry, tragic and tender, and altogether thrilling. Both moved and enthralled, I couldn't stop reading."
--Robert Clark
Author of In the Deep Midwinter and Love Among the Ruins
"Huston treads where few writers dare, jumping fearlessly into the roiling cauldron of factious Central American politics, class, culture, and religions. No doubt it would have been easier to write a mere gloss, a panoramic report describing the horror of war, revolution, grinding poverty, and the inevitable human carnage. However, the lens through which Huston sees penetrates far deeper than a perusal of these surface wounds to examine the limits of family loyalty, faith, and the causes and cure of hatred. A Land Without Sin is a compelling narrative that leaves me both haunted and hungry for more."
--Gina Ochsner
Author of People I Wanted to Be and The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
"With some of the sheer excitement of H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and the depth of soulful inquiry of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Paula Huston's A Land Without Sin is a savvy look at the violent struggles in southern Mexico over the last quarter century and a vivid perspective on the hopes and perils of liberation theology. It is a poignant and splendid book."
--Ron Hansen
Author of Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus
Paula Huston is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Daughters of Song, plus six works of creative nonfiction. Her essays and short fiction have been honored by Best American Short Stories, The Best Spiritual Writing, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently teaches in Seattle Pacific University's MFA in Creative Writing program.
A Land Without Sin A Novel edition by Paula Huston Literature Fiction eBooks
What a fabulous novel! As Eva drives more and more deeply into the jungle in her quest to find her brother, I felt some of the same terror as I did reading Heart of Darkness. And Eva's musing along the way about theology and psychology fascinated me, as it has other readers. But what no one has mentioned yet is how great the characters are. There's the gutsy, impulsive, impudent Eva, who seems so real that what she learned from her journey, I just naturally absorbed with her. There's also the attractive, taciturn, tempting scientist, Jan, torn by mixed feelings about his sick wife. And then there's Jet, burned out hippie cowboy, who struck me as a hilarious and brilliant parody of a Cormic McCarthy dude. Even as storm clouds lower, there's fun in this book, and remarkable characters.Product details
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A Land Without Sin A Novel edition by Paula Huston Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Having lived in Mexico and worked with a lovely Maya pastor outside of Acapulco I could relate to this story and I loved it. A story of human relationships - historical relationships - class struggles - personal belief systems and the pain involved in societal change. I was sorry when it ended.
A book that is difficult to put down. You know it is good, if when it ends, you are wishing for more. Good character development. I want to go through their future with them.
One reviewer said, "This [A land without sin] is what a Christian novel should look like". Although I understand the sentiment. I'm not sure it really is a Christian novel. For sure it includes both Christians and atheists but it treats both with respect. There's profanity where real people are likely to use it and frank, though not graphic, concerns with sexuality. It's also about love in relationships; how it builds and how it can be damaged in spite of the best of intentions, yet spring back to grow and abide. It takes us through Central American rain forests and suggests ever so subtly the universality of our struggle for freedom and justice with the possibility it may have motivated ancient Mayans as well. It is a great book that deserves much more attention than it's gotten. I hope that changes.
"I was looking for my brother." So begins Paula Huston's outstanding second novel, "A Land Without Sin," which some have compared, because of its Mexican jungle setting and its emphasis on Catholic faith, with Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory." The narrator is 34-year-old Eva Kovic, a tough, cynical war photographer who has bounced for a decade from one global hot spot and one loveless bed to another. Her brother, Stefan, an idealistic, newly ordained priest, has disappeared in Chiapas state in late 1993, on the eve of the Zapatista revolt. He may have joined the rebels, mostly Maya Indians who have been oppressed for centuries. He may be imprisoned or dead.
Actually, if there's a Greene novel lurking in the background here, a better candidate would be "The End of the Affair," in which the embittered writer who tells the story is drawn screaming and kicking in the direction of faith after his lover, who has promised God to end their affair if their lives are spared in a German air raid on London during World War II, insists on keeping her promise. Those first six words -- "I was looking for my brother" -- signify the setting of the hook. For the first time in years, Eva is acting in the name of love and obligation, not of freedom and adrenaline highs. She may fight the hook all she wants, thrash around in the bottom of the boat, but she's caught, and the larger part of Huston's story shows her slowly being reeled in.
As cover for her search, Eva works for a Dutch archaeologist, Jan Bource, who is investigating ancient Mayan temples. He has a theory about why that civilization collapsed so suddenly, and it proves to have something in common with the theories about evil -- where it comes from, and how best to resist it -- that Stefan has outlined in letters Eva carries with her. Jan, his teen-age son, Rikki, and his wife, Anne, who has a wasting disease, become a surrogate family for Eva, whose own family -- grim Croatian-Americans in Chicago with more guilty secrets than even a cynic could imagine -- she and Stefan were happy to leave.
Anne, in particular, confounds Eva. She can barely function; she will die soon. Why is she so calm and happy? What is the value of her life -- of any human life? What do Jan, Rikki and Eva owe her in terms of attention, presence, love? If the shooting and the jungle trekking in "A Land Without Sin" have to wait until such issues are explored, this seems to be deliberate, a statement of Huston's priorities.
A fine stylist both in fiction ("Daughters of Song") and in nonfiction ("The Holy Way," etc.) and an indefatigable researcher, Huston evokes the sights, sounds and smells of Guatemala and southern Mexico, tells us more about the Maya than most of us would imagine is known, and, through Stefan, suggests that Christians have misunderstood the Crucifixion for 2,000 years. Instead of being a typical act of scapegoating, she says, it promised a way out of the seemingly endless human cycle of blood sacrifice, warfare and revenge -- a Catholic version of an ideal Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King would have found congenial. If this ideal isn't put to the ultimate test here -- if everyone gets off a little easily in the end -- it hardly diminishes the novel's power.
Eva Kovic is a thirty-something war-hardened photo-journalist, deliberately estranged from her miserable Croatian immigrant parents, her own past, and the Catholic church. However, when her brother, an idealistic priest whom she has not seen in years, disappears in the jungles of southern Mexico on the eve of the Zapatista revolution, she decides to use her experience with rough travel and good cameras as cover, to make her way into the wilds, find her brother and bring him home.
Thus begins this amazing novel.
Author Paula Huston brings formidable gifts to bear in the writing of this, her first novel in nearly twenty years a lifelong interest in anthropological archaeology, decades of discipline in the craft of writing, her own travels in Latin America, and years of study in theology.
Huston weaves her tale at several levels at once the book is simultaneously a riveting political thriller, a fascinating historical novel (not only about the uprising in Chiapas in the 1990s but dark days in the Balkans in the 1940s), a moving coming-of-age story, and a brilliant exploration of ancient Mayan mysteries in tension with provocative contemporary theology.
And she does all this superbly well.
This book has been compared to Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, an accolade which it richly deserves. In the graceful way it braids issues of public importance with private concerns, it also merits comparison with Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior and Ann Patchett's Run (which from me is high praise indeed).
Both those who have admired Huston's six non-fiction books and those who have never heard of her will immensely enjoy A Land Without Sin.
This is a book to read and re-read, to give to friends, to ponder and remember, for a long time to come.
What a fabulous novel! As Eva drives more and more deeply into the jungle in her quest to find her brother, I felt some of the same terror as I did reading Heart of Darkness. And Eva's musing along the way about theology and psychology fascinated me, as it has other readers. But what no one has mentioned yet is how great the characters are. There's the gutsy, impulsive, impudent Eva, who seems so real that what she learned from her journey, I just naturally absorbed with her. There's also the attractive, taciturn, tempting scientist, Jan, torn by mixed feelings about his sick wife. And then there's Jet, burned out hippie cowboy, who struck me as a hilarious and brilliant parody of a Cormic McCarthy dude. Even as storm clouds lower, there's fun in this book, and remarkable characters.
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