[REVIEW] A Different Sun, by Elaine Neil Orr

388 pages, $16.00

Review by Hannah Rodabaugh

Elaine Neil Orr’s first novel, A Different Sun, is a fascinating portrayal of 19^th century missionaries struggling to create a Baptist church in the Yoruba region of Nigeria. Orr got her inspiration for the book from the diary of Lurana Davis Bowen, who, along with her husband Thomas Jefferson Bowen, became the first Southern Baptists who worked as missionaries in Africa during the 19^th century. Orr writes:

“My mother gave me a copy of Lurana’s diary when I was working on my memoir, Gods of Noonday. I was tantalized by its suggested brevity . . . I first imagined a work of creative nonfiction in which I would seek to expand Lurana’s story, using all the historical evidence I could find, as well as my own experience. I found instead that fiction was the best medium for conveying not Lurana’s story per se but my own vision of what might have happened when a young, well-to-do woman from Georgia fell in love with a former Texas cavalryman and traveled to Yorubaland. What motivated her? What did she long for? What were her limitations?”

The book’s opening focuses on Emma as an eight-year-old girl and the developing friendship she experiences with an old slave of her father’s, a gnarled old man named Uncle Eli. Her father, who Emma by turns idolizes and despises, punishes Uncle Eli for an infraction by cutting off some of his toes. Repulsed by this cruelty, she eventually refuses to take over managing the plantation from her father and instead decides to become a missionary. Several years later, she makes the acquaintance of Henry Bowman, a good-looking former Texas cavalryman reformed into a preacher and missionary. Bowman, who is on a lecture circuit to drum up funds for his work in Africa, meets Emma in a local Georgia church and immediately feels drawn to her. The connection between them is instant, and Orr writes about their meeting with eloquence and poignancy:

“In 1850, [Henry] had gone to Africa. But in his three-year tour he had greatly desired a wife. There was a practical side; he needed a nurse for those times he was ill. Furthermore, he was sometimes attracted to an African woman and felt he might—in a rash moment—give in . . . The evening he found Emma in the vestibule of her church, he looked with new admiration on the Lord’s capacity for humor. She was a tall girl of ordinary looks but with a swayback that suggested motion even when she stood still. It was clear she was waiting for him and just as clear that she was going somewhere regardless of who took her. Cleave, he thought, and meant both ways, but it was not a sin because he intended to marry her.”

The illness Henry mentions is frequent reprises of malaria, which affect his brain and often leave him hallucinating and incoherent. Although he is upfront with Emma about his illnesses, their recurrence becomes significant to the plot later on. After a fairly truncated courtship, the Bowmans leave on a steamer set for the African coast. About this time, Henry gives Emma a handmade mahogany writing box. This box and Emma’s focus around it, whether writing in her journal or writing notes to others, will become a focal point of the story, a kind of leitmotif in the background whenever something significant occurs.

Once in Africa, Emma and her husband’s idolized relationship slowly starts to disintegrate. Henry’s behavior towards Emma becomes increasingly neglectful, egotistical, or selfish. For example, he asks Emma, then heavily pregnant with their second child (the first was lost to disease as an infant), to up and move to yet another still more remote outpost to build his church. When Emma refuses, he walks off and abandons her for a few days for not agreeing instantly. What saves him from being unlikeable is that Emma so admires her husband that we want to like him for her sake if not for ours. However, as Henry’s neglect and indifference to her deepens, Emma develops unwanted feelings for her husband’s personal assistant, a freed slave named Jacob. Orr handles this delicate situation with a deft touch and subtle interweaving. For example, after Emma cuts her thumb while peeling a tomato, Jacob helps her wrap the wound in an experience that crackles with wild energy and unfulfilled lust. Orr writes:

“Looking up at him, [Emma] had the briefest vision of being his captive . . . His power was a demand, and with every press of his hand, her blood surged. He brought the thumb up to eye level, positioning the slip of skin just so, and pressed the end of the bandage on the wound. Emma felt a thread of pleasure coil around a throb of pain … A tremendous energy filled the space between them, as if the entire world had been condensed in this moment, and all people and places with it. Surely Jacob felt it as well, this condensed field, the currants of power.”

It’s powerful writing (whatever its intention). As the novel progresses, the tension continues to build between the two as, simultaneously, Emma’s marriage continues to break down.

A Different Sun is not a suspense novel; it unfolds slowly. You will generally know where the plot is going. (There are absolutely some surprises at the end that I won’t share because I don’t want to spoil them for you). However, the most exciting thing about this novel, and what kept my attention riveted, were the subtle and intricate ways the characters developed both along the way and in reaction to each other. In this book, the characters are the story, and it is absolutely worth it to see how they change and grow.

***

Hannah Rodabaugh received her MA from Miami University and her MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. Her work was included in Flim Forum Press’ anthology: A Sing Economy. Recently, her work has been published in Defenestration, Used Furniture Review, Palimpsest, Similar:Peaks::, Horse Less Press Review, Smoking Glue Gun, and Nerve Lantern. Her chapbook, With Words: Verse in Concordance, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.