Angels of Destruction: A Novel

Donohue, Keith

ISBN 10: 0307450252 ISBN 13: 9780307450258

Publisher: Crown, 2009

Synopsis

Keith Donohue’s first novel, The Stolen Child, was a national bestseller hailed as “captivating” (USA Today), “luminous and thrilling” (Washington Post), and “wonderful...So spare and unsentimental that it’s impossible not to be moved (Newsweek. His new novel, Angels of Destruction, opens on a winter’s night, when a young girl appears at the home of Mrs. Margaret Quinn, a widow who lives alone. A decade earlier, she had lost her only child, Erica, who fled with her high school sweetheart to join a radical student group known as the Angels of Destruction. Before Margaret answers the knock in the dark hours, she whispers a prayer and then makes her visitor welcome at the door.

The girl, who claims to be nine years old and an orphan with no place to go, beguiles Margaret, offering some solace, some compensation, for the woman’s loss. Together, they hatch a plan to pass her off as her newly found granddaughter, Norah Quinn, and enlist Sean Fallon, a classmate and heartbroken boy, to guide her into the school and town.

Their conspiracy is vulnerable not only to those children and neighbors intrigued by Norah’s mysterious and magical qualities but by a lone figure shadowing the girl who threatens to reveal the child’s true identity and her purpose in Margaret’s life. Who are these strangers really? And what is their connection to the past, the Angels, and the long-missing daughter?

Angels of Destruction is an unforgettable story of hope and fear, heartache and redemption. The saga of the Quinn family unfolds against an America wracked by change. As it delicately dances on the line between the real and the imagined, this mesmerizing new novel confirms Keith Donohue’s standing as one of our most inspiring and inventive novelists.

About this title

About the Author

KEITH DONOHUE’s first novel, The Stolen Child, was a New York Times bestseller. For many years a ghostwriter, he now works at a federal governmental agency in Washington, D.C. He has published short stories and literary criticism, most recently an introduction to the collected works of Flann O’Brien. Donohue holds a Ph.D. in English from the Catholic University of America.

From AudioFile

Cassandra Campbell has a difficult mission. She must convince listeners to suspend their disbelief and accept a world that darts between the real and the otherworldly. Nine-year-old Norah arrives in the middle of the night at the home of the lonely Mrs. Quinn. Mrs. Quinn's daughter, Erica, ran away ten years earlier, and she willingly takes in the child and makes up a story to explain her presence. Campbell's narration during this section of the story is whispery. Is she conveying secrecy, Norah's mysterious nature, or the questionable traits of the precocious child? Campbell's reading is more substantial when the character of Erica re-enters the story. She is more solidly developed than the angelic Norah, whose enigmatic, ethereal qualities may or may not hook the listener. S.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307450252
• ISBN 13: 9780307450258
• Binding: Roughcut
• Number of pages: 368