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"Karel had never accustomed himself to the way a woman's joy and sorrow could sound so much same when given voice. He'd grown up around boys, in the midst of men, for whom pain was weathered in silence and pleasure announced in exaggerated groans of relief."
~Page 285
Title: The Wake of Forgiveness
Author: Bruce Machart
ISBN: 9780151014439
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/2010
Pages: 309
Based in Texas, this novel starts from 1895 and goes on to 1924 spanning almost 30 years. When a landowners fourth child is born, his wife dies. Karel, the child is hardly ever loved by his father. But his brothers do seem to love him. Karel often dreams of the mother he has never known and wishes for his father to love him, which does not happen.
Since a toddler, Karel is good with horses. Only while riding, Karel feels bonded to his father, who does his best not to encourage the boy. When a Spanish Landowner comes into town along with his daughters in tow, 15 year old Karel is made to race for the stakes of his family. It turns out that it is his brothers who gain but he is left alone with his father. And he gets estranged from his brothers. Fourteen years later, when tragedy strikes, Karel knows that he has to to make a move which might bring him and his brother closer to each other.
With horses, and racing and people whose life surrounds around the animals, this novel is captures the spirit of Texas of those times. Karel is not treated well by his father but we never see him hating his father. His father had made him and his brothers plow the fields due to which all of them have been permanently marked by the yoke. All this are a bonding factor between them. And when time comes for them to reconcile, they are only too eager to meet each other halfway through.
It goes back and forth, abut it does not distract us from the novel. Long after finishing it, the story, the characters stay in the mind. Especially Karel. After all, it is his story. The prose is wonderful, moving and well written.
