The Oblate’s Confession
by William Peak
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Dec 01 2014 | Archive Date Dec 31 2014
Description
England, the 7th century. Petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms make war upon one another and their Celtic neighbors. Christianity is a new force in the land, one whose hold remains tenuous at best. Power shifts back and forth uneasily between two forms of the new faith: a mystical Celtic Catholicism and a newer, more disciplined form of Catholicism emanating from Rome. Pagan rites as yet survive in the surrounding hills and mountains. Plague sweeps across the countryside unpredictably, its path marked by death and destruction.
In keeping with a practice common at the time, an Anglo-Saxon warrior donates his youngest child to the monastery of Redestone, in effect sentencing the boy to spend the rest of his life as a monk. This gift-child, called an oblate, will grow up in the abbey knowing little of his family or the expectations his natural father will someday place upon him, his existence haunted by vague memories of a former life and the questions those memories provoke.
Who is his father, the distant chieftain who sired him or the bishop he prays for daily? And to which father, natural or spiritual, will he owe allegiance when, at length, he is called upon to ally himself with one and destroy the other? These are the dilemmas the child faces. The answers will emerge from the years he spends in spiritual apprenticeship to a hermit who lives on the nearby mountain of Modra nect – and his choices will echo across a lifetime.
A Note From the Publisher
William Peak is communications manager for the Talbot County Free Library in Maryland. A graduate of Washington & Lee University and the creative writing program at Hollins University, he spent ten years researching and writing The Oblate’s Confession, his debut novel. Peak lives in Easton, Maryland, with his wife, Melissa McLoud, a professional historian.
Advance Praise
Like T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, William Peak’s classic coming-of-age story transports the reader back to Dark Age Britain, where a boy seeks enlightenment from a mystical hermit in a lonely forest. But unlike the future King Arthur, Peak’s young narrator follows the spiritual path of a monk. The adventures of Winwæd draw us into a perilous landscape of struggling monasteries, roving bands of armed men, and mysterious outbreaks of plague. In The Oblate’s Confession, impeccable historical research unites with a vivid evocation of everyday experience to bring a lost world back to life.
- John R. Hale, author, Lords of the Sea
William Peak’s masterful prose—its sentences as skillfully made and enduring as the abbey at Redestone—is what makes this book so compelling. I read it twice—once for the intricacies of character and plot, then again for the pure pleasure of Peak’s writing.
- Sue Ellen Thompson, poet, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and winner of the 2010 Maryland Author Award
This is a world you can get lost in. William Peak has done a great job of conjuring up another time and place, so realistic you can feel the damp stone walls and the cold of winter, the distant chanting of the monks and the heavy hand of a hard and brutal time on every shoulder.
- Helen Chappell, author, The Oysterback Tales and A Whole World of Trouble
Bravo to William Peak, who employs a simple narrative to illustrate complex themes including obligation to country, spirituality and family. A stunning debut...I look forward to more!
- Amy Abrams, author, Schenck in the 21st Century and The Cage and the Key
Bill Peak has written a magical book. This gripping coming of age tale engages us with Winwaed's authentic, mesmerizing voice that at once transports us to another ancient world and connects us more fully to our own. This beautiful novel resonates in all the most important ways - spiritually, humanly, and aesthetically.
- Phoebe Stein, Executive Director, Maryland Humanities Council
The Oblate's Confession is an extremely well written and engaging read for anyone interested in the life of the mind and especially for readers interested in the early medieval world. It describes in vivid, well-researched detail the harshness of monastic life in this particular place and time and is expressed in language that brings alive both the period and the people. The oblate’s living under a rule of silence in no way inhibits his expressing himself as he writes his confession. This is a far simpler world than the reader's, but it is rich with the thoughtful examination of events and of questions still pondered today, to whom or what does one owe allegiance? how do we reconcile our beliefs and our actions in situations that pit one against the other?
- Frannie Ashburn, Former Director, North Carolina Center for the Book
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780990460800 |
| PRICE | $25.99 (USD) |
Links
Average rating from 23 members
Featured Reviews
Tony R, Reviewer
William Peak’s evocative images of Dark Age Britain are haunting and convincing. The Oblate’s Confession has a slow pace and demands the reader's attention, so is a book to save for the long winter months. The rewards are there, however, as it raises many questions that are as relevant today as they were in medieval times.
I was fascinated by the details of life in a monastery, the hardships and challenges that were presumably taken for granted at the time. The almost poetic narrative unfolds to give a real sense of what it must have been like as the new Christian religion swept across a Britain where plagues and sacrifice were part of everyday life.
Recommended for anyone who would like to look beyond what have been dismissively called 'the Dark Ages' and understand a little more of our medieval heritage. The Oblate’s Confession is a book I suspect I will return to.
Heather B, Reviewer
All reviews appear on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing plus LT Facebook and Twitter, eyes.2c review blog
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P9TWIDO/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img (Dec. 5, 2014)
LibaryThing and LibraryThing Facebook and Twitter http://www.librarything.com/work/15298337/114537759 (Dec. 5, 2014)
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1124085217 (Dec. 5, 2014)
eyes.2c reviews blog http://eyes2creviews.blogspot.ca/2014/12/a-treasure-bright-place-full-of-color.html (Dec. 5, 2014)
...a treasure! 'a bright place full of color' even in the darkest hour!
Set during 7th Century England when Christianity is finding a foothold in England. When different groups of monks hold differing attitudes. A world where Christianity and ancient beliefs clash. A small boy, Winwaed, is given to a Monastery straddling two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
A world where the power of spirits and prayer is primal, unfettered by the rationalism of today. We begin with the oblate as an old man retelling his story, giving his confession. We never know to whom. We don't know the oblates name until sometime into the story. That's all part of the mystery.
We see the world through his eyes as a small child. This is fascinating and powerful stuff. We see first hand life in the Monastery; we see the confusion of learning to live and work in silence, Winwaed's growing relationship with the hermit , his meeting a young girl. All heady interactions.
Later we see Winwaed's understanding of the world influenced by the revelations of his father. This brings conflict for Winwaed. Whom should he believe, his natural father or his monastic fathers? After all he has known and trusted the latter for longer than the fleeting moments he is given with his real father. And yet the serpent of uncertainty enters Winwaed's garden of Redestone.
The story is littered with precious moments of contact with the hermit. Moments that we see through the child Winwaeds's eyes and, and moments when the dialogue shifts so that we see Winwaed seeing himself as a child and then as the adult recounting theses experiences through the medium of his confession. Moments like viewing Redestone from above and understanding what that encompasses. Moments when he and through him, we, can smell the dankness of the Forest and hear the buzz of the bees or the yip of the fox, or feel the warmth of the sun. That special experience of looking as directed by the hermit at prayer as part of the river Meolch's flow, a focusing meditative coming into being. We see that. At that time the child cannot.
This is an amazing recounting of monastic life that delves into the nature of God and of prayer and of our very human responses to both. The story pulls you in and captures life in such a telling way that you the reader seamlessly become part and parcel of the life reflected.
The Oblate's Confession is an unexpected gift.
A NetGalley ARC
Stephanie H, Reviewer
A young boy is given to Redestone monastery in 7th century England. Winwaed's father has made a promise during the war that his next born son would go to God, so Winwaed is donated at a young age. As the country encounters wars, plagues and political upheaval, Winwaed watches from the confines of the monastery grounds. As he grown Winwaed earns the position as the one to climb a nearby mountain to deliver supplies to a monk who has decided to live as a hermit. The hermit becomes a father figure to Winwaed, teaching him about nature and deep prayer. Winwaed begins to enjoy his trips up the mountain. When Winwaed's biological father arrives at the monastery, Winwaed becomes torn. His father delights him with stories of war and his mother; then he asks Winwaed to pray for the fall of another at the monastery. Winwaed becomes confused and begins to question his life.
Written as a confession from the perspective of a young boy, Winwaed's perspective becomes a window into life in the Dark Ages, written with a simplistic beauty that brought to life the everyday workings of a monastery. Through Winwaed's sin of questioning his religion, he is forced to write his confession, which becomes an autobiography of his time at Redestone. Since Winwaed is looking back on his childhood, the writing has a wonderful sense of nostalgia. One of the first scenes, when Winwaed is first dropped off at the monastery and a Brother makes a snowman with Winwaed to comfort him, drew me in with. His time spent with the hermit was also endearing and provided some of my favorite parts of the story. Through his time at the monastery, Winwaed lives through many events, written with historical accuracy, Winwaed recounts surviving a plague, the rise and fall of Kings and Queens and the impacts of the political upheaval on the monastery and the nearby town. Though this story takes place in a monastery, there is actually not an overbearing religious tone, which I am glad for. Also, since the writing is from Winwaed's perspective, simply recounting the facets of his life, there is no huge climax or large mystery, but rather just the examination of his life and what has caused Winwaed to question his teachings.
This book was received for free in return for an honest review.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
