A God in Ruins

Veteran bestselling author Leon Uris ( Exodus , Trinity ) stays true to form with A God in Ruins , delivering yet another vast and vigorous novel about politics and history, right and wrong, love and loss. This time his country of choice is the United States, on the eve of the 2008 presidential election. The incumbent, Thornton Tomtree, is running against the Catholic governor of Colorado, Quinn Patrick O'Connell. Thornton, who grew up playing in his daddy's Providence junkyard, made billions on a computer invention before becoming president. Brainy, calculating, and stiff, he lacks both charm and scruples--qualities that the honest and open Quinn, an ex-Marine, has in spades. Though set in 2008, A God in Ruins has its roots firmly in the past. In order to flesh out his characters, Uris casts his net all the way back to World War II, highlighting some of the more dramatic moments in Thornton and Quinn's lives as they move inexorably from youth towards a run for the White House. In the process, Uris takes up some of the attention-grabbing political issues in America from the second half of the 20th century: gun control, terrorist attacks, and Clinton's sex scandals. Uris can always be counted on to inject the political with the personal, and Quinn is the perfect vehicle for this when his presidential bid is threatened at the eleventh hour by potentially damning information about his past. A lively supporting cast of characters--from Quinn's delicious wife Rita to Thornton's conflicted right-hand man Darnell--adds spark to this emotional story. At one point, when the campaign has reached a fever pitch, Thornton says about Quinn, "Our jingle-jangle rope-a-dope cowboy is going to be a handful." So is Uris's engaging book, which positively spills over with simple heroism and hot-button political issues. --Katherine Anderson From Publishers Weekly Veteran writer Uris (Exodus; Redemption) begins his 12th novel with a compelling premise: Quinn O'Connell is certain to become America's second Roman Catholic president, except that he discovers, a week before the 2008 election, that he was actually born Jewish. Adopted 60 years ago by a Catholic couple, and newly informed by his long-lost Jewish half-brother of his heritage, O'Connell now asks a difficult question: Is America ready to elect a Jewish president? This initial introduction of the issue of anti-Semitism seems promising. Uris obviously is aiming to put the religion of a world leader in perspective: what does it matter if he's at heart a good and honest man? But then he virtually ignores the theme for the next 300 pages. Even when the national reaction to O'Connell's identity results in epidemic violence against Jewish people across the country, an event compared to Kristallnacht, the national issue that gets the most play in O'Connell's presidential race is gun control. His opponent in the election is Republican incumbent Thornton Tomtree, whose administration is struggling to repair his reputation in the wake of violent national tragedies like the Four Corners Massacre, in which 400 Eagle Scouts and their troop leaders are killed in a catastrophic explosion set off by a drugged-out militia group. O'Connell goes up against the gun lobby and calls for repeal of the Second Amendment as part of his presidential campaign. This issue dominates the bulk of the novel, making the opening and closing sections feel like a cut-and-paste job on a totally different story. Years are dismissed in sentences and events are outlined instead of described. Gun lobbies, neo-Nazi militias and tensions between black and Jewish communities eventually get worked into the plot, as does O'Connell's family history, but Uris's apocalyptic tale is too stylistically scattered to generate much suspense. In fact, readers may think they are reading a miniseries teleplay that hasn't been fully fleshed out. Author tour; 15-city TV satellite tour. (June) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal It's 2008, and the Democratic candidate for the presidency is Jewish?but, as an orphan who was raised Catholic, he doesn't even know it.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Is America ready for a Jewish president? The question arises when a candidate in the 2008 election, the adoptee of an Irish Catholic couple, learns that his biological parents were Jewish. Whatever Quinn O'Connell decides to do hangs fire while flashbacks narrate his life. When his father returns from the Battle of Saipan, he and his wife buy a Colorado ranch, Troublesome Mesa, which plays out its cutesy name. Reconciling themselves to their inability to conceive, the O'Connells enlist wife Siobhan's connections to the Catholic clergy and thus arrives baby Quinn. Now what, Uris might have asked himself. Rummaging in the prop-shop, he pulls out a father-son conflict, a couple of girlfriends for Quinn, then a hitch in the marines. The latter device spawns one of several aimless episodes in the novel: a marine antiterrorist raid on an Iranian target. Unconnected to any genuine plot, the raid fades to black as Quinn returns to Colorado, inherits Troublesome Mesa, confronts a friend who had cuckolded him, and starts a political career. Meanwhile back, not at the ranch, but in Rhode Island, Thornton Tomtree, son of a junk dealer, has parlayed his electronics business into the presidency, an ascent whose details flit in between O'Connell's memories of his life. Whatever interest is leveraged by the possibility of the cynical Tomtree playing the Jewish-origin card to win reelection, quite a few of Uris' bankably big readership will be puzzled as this novel coasts through disconnected story lines (including a clunky anti-NRA satire) in search of a theme. Gilbert Taylor From Kirkus Reviews Uris takes on a subject bigger than the Irish (Trinity, 1976, and Redemption, 1995), the Jews (Exodus, 1958, and Mitla Pass, 1988), or the Arabs (The Haj, 1984). This time, it's Man himself, of whom Emerson says, ``Man is a god in ruins . . . Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.'' The Messiah here, a Jewish orphan adopted and raised by a Catholic family, is the great liberal Quinn Patrick O'Connell, now at 60 governor of Colorado and Democratic candidate for president. Sloganeering about the nation's Moral Imperative, OConnell has grand plans for the rehabilitation of ruined mankind through racial harmony. But he also has problems, including vile barbs from the incumbent president and rival messiah, black-hearted Thornton Tomtree. The time-span covers the last week before the election in 2008, with long flashbacks to WWII and forward. Will Quinn follow in the footsteps of JFK as our second Catholic president? And what is the terrible scandal in his past that may undermine his hopes? If elected, can he rise above riots and bomb-throwing, the blows from armed zealots and rigid fundamentalists whose hatreds divide the nation? Uris himself offers a rather woozy moral message bordering on bombast in a novel that may widen his audience and boost sales, but hardly matches the authors messianic ambitions. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "As exciting as Exodus, Topaz and Mila 18." -- -- Dallas Morning News "Great reading...Uris mixes politics, history, love and people's passions into yet another bestseller....Compelling." -- -- Tulsa World "Vintage Uris." -- Lancaster (PA) Sunday News Internationally acclaimed novelist Leon Uris ran away from home at age seventeen, a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, to join the Marine Corps, and he served at Guadalcanal and Tarawa. His first novel, Battle Cry , was based on his own experiences in the Marines, which he revisited in his final novel, O'Hara's Choice . His other novels include the bestsellers Redemption, Trinity, Exodus, QB VII, and Topaz, among others. Leon Uris passed away in June 2003. Read more