Thomas Keneally is a writer of extraordinary range: from Schindler's List to The Great Shame his storytelling has engaged millions of readers. Now, after a brief departure into non-fiction, he is back with a novel as timely as it is enduring. On the outskirts of Sydney, Father Frank Darragh is embarking on his new life of priesthood just as war erupts in the Pacific theater. American GIs pour into Father Darragh's neighborhood, and with them comes a reminder of the atrocities abounding nearby. Determined to shun hypocrisy, the earnest priest finds himself constantly at odds with his superiors, who frown on his efforts to rescue an errant black soldier and pay deathbed visits to the wayward. But Frank Darragh persists, becoming his parish's most popular confessor, particularly among wives of Australian servicemen who confront an array of temptations while their husbands are away. One such parishioner, Kate Heggarty, turns the tables of temptation on young Darragh, challenging his spiritual beliefs and stirring a vulnerable place in his heart. When Kate is found murdered, his anguish is only compounded by accusations that he caused her death. Poignantly depicting the conflicts between the secular and the holy, and between the family of Darragh's birth and the brotherhood of priests, OFFICE OF INNOCENCE is a tale set in the most compelling of circumstances. Drawing on his own experience studying for the priesthood in his youth, Thomas Keneally has created an endearing protagonist who speaks to the conundrums of our age while paying tribute to quiet heroes of the past. "In the style of the best historians, [Keneally] allows the intrinsic power of the tales he tells and the people who populate his pages to draw the reader into a fully elaborated universe." -The New York Times Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Keneally steers a young, na ve Australian priest through a series of complex moral choices in his latest novel, which takes place early in WWII with the Japanese forces steadily advancing southward. The insular existence of Catholic cleric Frank Darragh is disturbed when he is approached by a beautiful married woman named Kate Heggarty, whose husband has been captured by the Germans in North Africa. Darragh tries to comfort her, but Heggarty retains her combative stance toward traditional Catholicism as she drifts toward infidelity as a possible means of solace. In spite of his halfhearted efforts to deny her charms, Darragh's growing infatuation becomes an issue when Heggarty is suddenly murdered and the local detectives try to implicate him. Darragh also faces trouble from his conservative monsignor, who sends the priest away on retreat for involving the parish in the investigation. Despite the admonitions of his superior, Darragh puts considerable effort into trying to clarify his role in Heggarty's death, until a U.S. soldier from a nearby American base provides a stunning and compromising revelation regarding the killer's identity. Keneally portrays his protagonist's innocence with a keen but subtle sense of irony, and the surprising plot twists help him steer clear of the usual clich s afflicting novels about compromised clerics. But the true excellence of the book lies in the author's ability to blend his depiction of a seaside village in crisis as the Japanese threaten to invade with the nuances of morality and faith that constantly keep Darragh at odds with himself. The novel lacks the weight of Schindler's List or Keneally's narrative history The Great Shame, but it is a sterling effort on a smaller scale.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

The prolific Australian author who brought us Schindler's List offers a profound and moving novel about one young priest's crisis of faith in Sydney during World War II. Father Frank Darragh already feels conflicted about being out of the fighting when his regular duties as a soft-hearted confessor at St. Margaret's begin to put him in touch with war widows and American GIs. He is especially intrigued by Kate Heggarty, who seeks spiritual guidance when she's tempted to cheat on her P.O.W. husband. The monsignor objects to Father Frank's becoming so involved in her case, which explodes in the young priest's face when Kate turns up strangled. Father Frank's struggles to deal with the violent crime (and accusations that he caused Kate's death), while confronting the church hierarchy and his own shattered faith, fully reveal his humanity. A wonderful but never easy novel.-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Keneally's return to fiction, after the nonfiction American Scoundrel [BKL F 1 02], may, in its first slow-going pages, initially disappoint readers. But once his fiction engine begins hitting on all cylinders, readers will be swept away on a poignant but never sentimental tale of a young Australian priest, who, not long after his ordination, questions his vocation and his own version of its practice in the early years of World War II, when a Japanese invasion seems imminent. Father Frank Darragh intellectualizes his actions as soul saving, but his heart is often his true prompter, especially when ministering to the young Mrs. Heggarty, who has lost her faith and whose soldier husband is interned in North Africa. Father Darragh's attention to Mrs. Heggarty causes undue public and jurisprudential attention on Church goings-on when the woman is found murdered. What could have been a cliche-riddled and soap opera-like romance becomes, in Keneally's sensitive and intelligent hands, a gripping, resonant novel about the power and problems of faith and love. Brad Hooper. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.