I first
encountered Orr’s fiction in early 2009 when I reviewed the Winter 2008 issue
of Shenandoah, in which her story “Tennis
Lessons” appeared. I found this story to be penetrating, nuanced, and richly
detailed. A few months later, I had the good fortune to meet Ms. Orr when she
joined the faculty of Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program, where I was
then working on earning my MFA. Let me assure you that the fact that I got to
know and admire her has no influence upon my impressions of her novel.
Other
readers have noted that A Different Sun is
adventuresome and gripping, with life and death stakes – they are correct, this
novel is one that you will find impossible to put down. The story concerns a
young, Southern girl, Emma, who we first encounter in 1840, in Antebellum
Georgia. Emma falls in love with marries Henry, a missionary twenty years her
senior, and travels with him to Nigeria, to help him with his missionary work –
introducing Christ to the Africans.
The novel
brilliantly illustrates the challenges that arise from the vast differences in
culture and climate between the American South and the completely different
landscape of Africa and its people. And while this exploration is compelling
and fascinating, the heart of the novel is as moving and trenchant an
exploration of the institution of marriage I’ve encountered in modern
literature. The soaring highs and the deeply painful lows that accompany many (if not all) marriages are rendered in
exquisite detail and depth in Orr’s prose.
I couldn’t
put this book down and I am eager to read it again, after taking a little
time to linger in its glow.
Get this
book. Read it. You won’t regret it.
Namaste.
Brian
Russell
