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Title: An elegant, unnerving novel
Review: Stewart O'Nan has constructed a miniature world with A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, and he peoples it and describes it so vividly that you nearly feel you are a part of it. This effect is all the more chilling when that world starts to implode.A diptheria epidemic--something virtually unknown in modern times--is stealthily, then openly, decimating a small Wisconsin town. Jacob Hansen, who serves as a combination sheriff, undertaker and minister, is doing his level best to deal with his combination of duties in the face of the epidemic. He is a strong and silent type, a Civil War veteran, and he does what has to be done as many of the townspeople are stricken. By the time O'Nan reveals the subtle, horrifying breadth of the epidemic, he had me so involved that it nearly took my breath away.This is an outstandingly fine novel--elegantly made, profound in its implications, and still reverberating in my mind weeks after I finished it.
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