Customer Reviews

The Garden of Martyrs

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Michael C. White has based his novel on a factual incident, which I had never heard of before: a murder in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1805. There are many fine things about this excellently written book, among them a battle for a soul which is the most engrossing I have read since I read Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder(read 18 Mar 1947 - re-read 27 Nov 1982). Usually I prefer a factual account of an event as against a fictional account but in this instance it seems to me that the fictional additions to the account enhance rather than detract from the drama of the events related.

There are some books you read all the way through because you want to finish what you started. There are others you read because you can't help otherwise. When characters like Halligan and Daley, Father Cheverus, even the confused boy who testifies and the girl who serves water become so finely etched in your mind that they morph into tangible thoughts, that I believe is the mark of a great book. White's writing is so precise and powerful that every shuffle, breath and moment of silence can be heard and seen with intense clarity from begining to end. It is not often that one comes across the written word so well executed.

Marvelously detailed and written novel about various forms of anticatholic prejudice -- from the left and the right, if you will. Based on a true story of two Irishman convicted wrongly of murder and hung in Massachusetts in 1806, and about the priest who reluctantly comes to their aid. I cried my eyes out and that's a good thing.

It is no accident that Michael C. White's "The Garden of Martyrs" has received unqualified praise from the likes of Anita Shreve, Richard Russo, and A. Manette Ansay. This rich, compassionate, deeply moving novel will no doubt have an impact on American literature for years to come. As this novel amply illustrates, a talented writer can remind us that acts of courage and heroism can take many forms, and can reveal themselves in unlikely and surprising places. Michael White unpacks the crevices and narrow alleyways of "hidden" history, bringing it to life, suggesting how seemingly inconsequential and daily acts of courage and heroism can resonate throughout society and impact history. One will walk away from this novel emotionally drained, but inspired.

I have always been a fan of Michael C. White's work. He is one of our most talented contemporary authors, as his latest book proves. White transports the reader from Boston in the 1800s to France during the Revolution with seemingly effortless prose rich in historical detail. Readers will truly care for White's deeply drawn characters, Daley, Halligan and Cheverus, and will anxiously turn the pages in order to discover the men's fate. This is a deeply moving, impressively researched and wonderfully realized novel- a must read.

Micheal White has scored again. This talented writer takes an obscure event in U.S. history and hammers out a story that is gripping in its development of interesting and empathetic characters and rich in the details of the period to support them. A reader comes away with a gutteral sense of the bigotry of the period toward Catholics, and Irish Catholics in paticular. White draws a portrait of the twisted wreckage a storm of prejudice leaves.
White describes the three main characters, Halligan, Daley, and Father Cheverus from the inside out, exposing their thoughts, hopes and doubts to the reader at just the right velocity. He lifts the reader into early 19th century Massachusetts with wonderfully researched detail.
This is a book you'll want to linger over for a couple of weeks, but you'll finish it in a couple of sittings.

Don't miss this book. You'll never forget it. The Garden of Martyrs is one of the best novels I have read, ever. White attends to every detail of the story with such artistic care that the physical, emotional, spiritual and communal forces at work step right off the page, along with the human actors and the physical settings--so strongly that I felt I was a witness to all the events, as a family member or close friend might have been; and by the end of the book, the story in that way, belonged to me as well, as a life experince in which I shared.If history is to be taught, it should be taught this way, a way in which way we can live it too; then we might not have to repeat its lessons. The Garden of Martyrs is a tour de force, and obviously a work of love.

THE GARDEN OF MARTYRS is a powerful tale not only of early America but of the human heart of any age. Set in 1806, the novel takes the real murder trial of two Irish immigrants, Dominic Daley and James Halligan, and spins a remarkable story of the lives of three men. While it is set against the backdrop of intense anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices of early New England, it is also an interesting psycological investigation of guilt and the power of redemption. The fates of the three main characters--Daley, Halligan, and Father Cheverus, the priest who comes to their aid--are skillfully intertwined in this riveting novel. One of the best historical novels, in fact, one of the best novels period, that I have read in recent years.

The powerful story of two Irish Catholic immigrant men and a Boston priest drawn together as the two men stand trial for a murder. The book is thoughtfully written, incredibly rich in historical detail, and provocative. At a time when Irish Catholic immigrants were both hated and feared, the story of the men unfolds. It certainly causes the reader to consider how important our judicial system is. How many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted without solid evidence and executed in the name of justice? These men, later pardoned by Gov. Michael Dukakis, paid the ultimate price by being Irish and Catholic and probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. I highly recommend this wonderful book as well as others by the very talented Michael C. White.

Few of you would be surprised to hear that political expediency sometimes takes priority over sacred duty in Boston's Catholic Church. What Mike White reveals in his fourth novel The Garden of Martyrs, is that in Boston, the Church's craving for secular power and social acceptance has led it to neglect its most vulnerable parishioners from its earliest days.

In a novelization of the true story of two men tried, convicted and hanged for murder in Federalist Massachusetts he vividly portrays an era when the Irish were despised and persecuted by New England's Protestant majority. The only crime these two men committed turned out to be that they were both Irish, and Catholic.

Fictionalizing true crime is an endeavor thwart with danger. White deftly avoids the many traps by focusing on character, drawing deep and psychologically revealing portraits of two men - the Irish defendant, James Halligan, and Boston's French Priest, Father Cheveras.

White weaves the fate of the innocent men into the wider fabric of New England politics. By contrasting the subjective reality of these very different characters, and exploring their European backstories, he shows us how each was forced from their homeland by intolerable conditions, and the hopes and fancies that sustained their migrations.

Through the death row musings of the itinerant Halligan, White skillfully juxtaposes the personal and the political. The injustice done to two innocent men is the injustice done to an ethnic and religious minority.

This book is important because we tend to think of African Americans, Jews and Women as victims of mob hate and witch hunts. Catholic-hating in New England is half forgotten now. White, a Protestant, brings this sorry time to life, reminding us all that today's hatred may end up as tomorrow's shame.