Daniel McFarland has refined the life of a war correspondent down to an art. He knows how to get information out of officials who won't talk. He knows how to find the one man with a car who can get you out of town. He knows how to judge the gravity of a situation in a war-torn area (it's a bad sign when the dogs are gone). And he knows how to get to the heart of an explosive story and emerge unscathed. To Daniel, getting the story is everything.
When a trip to a warlord's camp in Uganda goes awry and Daniel's companions end up dead, he has his first serious moment of reckoning with his lack of faith, his steely approach to life, and his cool dispatch of the people around him. And as he falls in love with Julia Cadell, an idealistic doctor, he begins to see the world anew. The two run off together to a canal house in the middle of London, where they find a refuge from their perilous lives.
But they can't ignore the real world forever and are soon persuaded to travel to East Timor, where the entire nation has become a war zone. As the militia prepares to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of refugees, Daniel must decide whether to get the story of a lifetime or to see beyond the headlines to the people whose lives are in the balance.
"This touching, elegantly written tale aptly describes love and friendship amid the terror of contemporary war."
-- The Dallas Morning News
**
From Publishers Weekly
Lee is an experienced foreign correspondent (who is currently also a vice-president at PEN Center USA), and his knowledge of the perils and challenges of that life comes across most powerfully in this somber and elegiac debut novel. It is the story of the life and death of war correspondent Daniel McFarland, who after a brush with death in Uganda develops a new sense of mission and responsibility toward those whose wracked lives he is covering. He is drawn into an affair with Julia Cadell, an English doctor who idealistically ministers to the suffering in war zones, and the book's title refers to a brief idyll they share in London before setting out again on dangerous missions. Their new one is in East Timor, where the Indonesian government is crushing an independence movement, while British and Australian troops, sent in by the UN, try to act as intermediaries without actually joining the fighting. The scenes on that idyllic island smashed by war are the best in the book-they have the breathless immediacy of battlefront reporting-and if Daniel's final decision is a bit melodramatic, a sad resolution is the only possible one for Lee's tale. A subplot about a wealthy British magnate in pursuit of Julia never quite convinces, and the narrator, a photographer who follows Daniel around, is a bit shadowy. But there's no denying the eloquence and terror of Lee's vistas of contemporary war in the world's more obscure corners.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Daniel McFarland has refined the life of a war correspondent down to an art. He knows how to get information out of officials who won't talk. He knows how to find the one man with a car who can get you out of town. He knows how to judge the gravity of a situation in a war-torn area (it's a bad sign when the dogs are gone). And he knows how to get to the heart of an explosive story and emerge unscathed. To Daniel, getting the story is everything.
When a trip to a warlord's camp in Uganda goes awry and Daniel's companions end up dead, he has his first serious moment of reckoning with his lack of faith, his steely approach to life, and his cool dispatch of the people around him. And as he falls in love with Julia Cadell, an idealistic doctor, he begins to see the world anew. The two run off together to a canal house in the middle of London, where they find a refuge from their perilous lives.
But they can't ignore the real world forever and are soon persuaded to travel to East Timor, where the entire nation has become a war zone. As the militia prepares to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of refugees, Daniel must decide whether to get the story of a lifetime or to see beyond the headlines to the people whose lives are in the balance.
"This touching, elegantly written tale aptly describes love and friendship amid the terror of contemporary war."
-- The Dallas Morning News **
From Publishers Weekly
Lee is an experienced foreign correspondent (who is currently also a vice-president at PEN Center USA), and his knowledge of the perils and challenges of that life comes across most powerfully in this somber and elegiac debut novel. It is the story of the life and death of war correspondent Daniel McFarland, who after a brush with death in Uganda develops a new sense of mission and responsibility toward those whose wracked lives he is covering. He is drawn into an affair with Julia Cadell, an English doctor who idealistically ministers to the suffering in war zones, and the book's title refers to a brief idyll they share in London before setting out again on dangerous missions. Their new one is in East Timor, where the Indonesian government is crushing an independence movement, while British and Australian troops, sent in by the UN, try to act as intermediaries without actually joining the fighting. The scenes on that idyllic island smashed by war are the best in the book-they have the breathless immediacy of battlefront reporting-and if Daniel's final decision is a bit melodramatic, a sad resolution is the only possible one for Lee's tale. A subplot about a wealthy British magnate in pursuit of Julia never quite convinces, and the narrator, a photographer who follows Daniel around, is a bit shadowy. But there's no denying the eloquence and terror of Lee's vistas of contemporary war in the world's more obscure corners.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When foreign correspondent Daniel McFarland heads to work, he never knows if he will come back. Whether his mission is to cover war-torn Bosnia or report on the wreckage of an earthquake, Daniel moves with precision and, most important, always gets the story. Now photographer Nicky Bettencourt has been chosen to travel with Daniel to Uganda to attempt a meeting with a bloodthirsty warlord who has murdered and displaced hundreds of people. Nicky's apprehension is well justified, since the last photographer to travel with Daniel was killed by a land mine. Once in Uganda, Daniel and Nicky arrive at the relief camp of Julia Cadell, a selfless doctor who is assisting the refugees pouring forth from decimated villages. Daniel is unaware that Julia will be the love of his life, and Nicky will not know, until it is too late, that he has forged the friendship of a lifetime. Lee is a foreign correspondent who creates a powerful aura of realism that will forever alter your perception of the news. Elsa Gaztambide
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