A Dark and Stormy Night - Softcover

Stacey, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911487256 ISBN 13: 9781911487258

Publisher: Medina Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

Simon Chance, Anglican bishop and former missionary, has withdrawn in mid-life to research his enduring mentor Dante, creator of The Divine Comedy. He is recently widowed, after the prolonged descent into dementia of his devoted wife Marigold. To recuperate from bereavement, he is invited by a life-long confidante, Clare, to join a house party of several friends from their university days in the hills behind St Tropez in southern France. The reunion coincides with the collapse of global banking confidence.

On a walk in the forest of the Massif des Maures surrounding the villa, in search of a church abandoned centuries ago, Chance loses his way – in a ‘dark wood’, as once experienced by Dante – while the night turns wild.

Marigold has not been the only love of Chance. The passionate liaison of his earlier life, pre-ordination, was with a student botanist. This very Evie, with her Parliamentarian spouse, is about to join the house party of Clare and a vital element in that intense, abandoned youthful liaison is yet to be reconciled with Chance’s ordained self.

The working-through of the nature of love, physical and spiritual, in love’s innocence and purity, will redeem or destroy him. Or both.

About this title

About the Author:

One-time chief roving correspondent of the Sunday Times, winner of the Foreign Correspondent of the Year award, Tom Stacey (born 1930) has reported from 128 countries. Subsequently as a publisher, his imprints have created comprehensive works on countries across the Middle East and Islamic world, the 20-volume Peoples of the Earth series issued in 14 languages, and The Concise Encyclopaedia of Islam of which he is the dedicatee. He and his companies' authors have championed campaigns or initiatives in support of various causes and issues, including drug addict rehabilitation. In penology, he conceived the electronic tagging of convicts (in 1981) and has championed the tag's introduction in Britain and internationally. He continues his role as a prison visitor, begun in 1967. His books include 7 novels, one collection of long-short stories with second collection due for publication, one drama film (starring John Hurt), and 3 works of remote travel, including Tribe: The Hidden History of the Mountains of the Moon (a TLS Book of the Year) which has played a vital role in the recognition by Uganda of the ethnic Kingdomhood of the people of Ruwenzori. He is a winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial prize and is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He and his sculptor wife Caroline are currently blessed with 25 descendants.

Review:

"This is a beautiful book. The Dante Scholar lost in a dark wood, the Bishop going into the darkness where God is. The man who has experienced Love on so many levels, reliving his past before confronting the great Empyrean. This impressive narration isn't just a stream of consciousness. It is a well-crafted narration, it has a plot. Marigold is very vivid to me, but the other two women, Clare and Evie, are also very distinct. Tom Stacey also conveys - mysteriously - the characters of the other members of the house party: whom we never meet. Humour, humanity, passion are all here. It's a superb achievement." - A N Wilson ;"Tom Stacey again confronts life's great issues in his superb new novel A Dark and Stormy Night. God and Mammon, music and Faith, pain and bereavement, the passing of time and the nature of friendship and grief, it opens with the hero getting physically lost in a forest in Provence at the time of the Great Crash. But is he spiritually lost too? All this plus Dante, pygmies and a brilliant twist in the tale. Vintage Stacey." - Andrew Roberts

About this edition

• Publisher: Medina Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1911487256
• ISBN 13: 9781911487258
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 210