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Bastille Day: A Novel
Veteran TV journalist Calvin Jones travels to Paris, where he negotiates love, friendship, and despair in award-winning novelist Greg Garrett’s Bastille Day.
With brilliant pacing and gorgeous prose, acclaimed novelist Greg Garrett tells the story of American TV journalist Calvin Jones, who travels to Paris to work with a producer friend he knows from their dark days covering the war in Iraq.
Cal Jones has had a quiet ten years, by design. After surviving the loss of two people he loved in the Iraq war, which he covered as a national correspondent, he fell apart and retreated to a local news job in Texas. Cal is still wrestling with those old demons when he goes to Paris to work with an old friend and encounters Nadia, a brilliant, lovely, and sad Saudi Muslim woman in Paris with plans to wed a Saudi sheikh in a family-arranged marriage.
Against his own better judgment, Cal falls for Nadia, even dragging her from the Seine when she attempts to solve her insoluble problem by taking her own life. He begins to risk a heart he thought was too badly broken to ever love again, and as the wedding ticks closer, to hope that perhaps Nadia can make a choice that includes him. Then their time rescuing each other is interrupted by the terror attack in Nice, which Cal is called out to cover. Back in that setting, Cal is thrown back into the memories of senseless violence and extremism that shattered him in Iraq—and that threaten to shatter him and his hopes now. Garrett’s characters wrestle with the ghosts of their pasts, as they long for love, friendship, and faith in the present. Bastille Day is a gloriously-affecting novel about how our histories can damage us, but hope can heal us.
With brilliant pacing and gorgeous prose, acclaimed novelist Greg Garrett tells the story of American TV journalist Calvin Jones, who travels to Paris to work with a producer friend he knows from their dark days covering the war in Iraq.
Cal Jones has had a quiet ten years, by design. After surviving the loss of two people he loved in the Iraq war, which he covered as a national correspondent, he fell apart and retreated to a local news job in Texas. Cal is still wrestling with those old demons when he goes to Paris to work with an old friend and encounters Nadia, a brilliant, lovely, and sad Saudi Muslim woman in Paris with plans to wed a Saudi sheikh in a family-arranged marriage.
Against his own better judgment, Cal falls for Nadia, even dragging her from the Seine when she attempts to solve her insoluble problem by taking her own life. He begins to risk a heart he thought was too badly broken to ever love again, and as the wedding ticks closer, to hope that perhaps Nadia can make a choice that includes him. Then their time rescuing each other is interrupted by the terror attack in Nice, which Cal is called out to cover. Back in that setting, Cal is thrown back into the memories of senseless violence and extremism that shattered him in Iraq—and that threaten to shatter him and his hopes now. Garrett’s characters wrestle with the ghosts of their pasts, as they long for love, friendship, and faith in the present. Bastille Day is a gloriously-affecting novel about how our histories can damage us, but hope can heal us.
272 pages, Paperback
Published April 4, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 26, 2023
Can we find spiritual resilience to survive the violence in our world?
Scholar, theologian and media veteran Greg Garrett is always a refreshing voice in the global conversation about how we can make our world a better place. A restless researcher and writer, his books surprise readers each time a new title is announced. His previous book, which I also highly recommend, is "A Long, Long Way—Hollywood's Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation." In spring 2023, he has given us this novel, "Bastille Day," and later this year he will launch a book about one of his mentors: James Baldwin.
The R-words: resilience, renewal and reconciliation are themes that run throughout his 20-or-so books, because both his fiction and his nonfiction are shaped by his own journey in faith. That journey has led him to ordination as an Episcopal priest and an appointment as the "canon theologian" occasionally is in residence at the American Cathedral in Paris.
And that means literally "in residence" at the Cathedral for some weeks each year. As his novel is launching this spring, Greg has enjoyed doing Zooms with readers and interviewers from an "apartment" in that cathedral where he and his wife Jeanie are staying in May 2023. That apartment, which I enjoyed seeing as I Zoomed with Greg this month for an author interview, looks more like a stone-walled cell in the Tower of London than what we would think of as a living space. But that same Cathedral tower apartment-space also is one of the many real-life settings in Paris that readers will enter in "Bastille Day."
Greg's training as a researcher led him to explore every corner of France that is featured in this new novel. And, without spoiling the suspense of the novel, several spaces in and around the American Cathedral are part of this adventure. What other locations crop up in "Bastille Day"? For example, Greg's main character is a network TV correspondent who likes to visit Harry's Bar, made famous by Ernest Hemingway and other celebrities. Throughout the novel, the river Seine itself becomes the setting for several dramatic scenes and Greg also takes us to the site of a major terrorist attack in France. As a TV correspondent, the main character Calvin has developed a specialty in covering global terrorism and he is sent to Paris by his network with that assignment.
Even though he's already got scars from this chosen specialty, Calvin accepts the assignment. So, we know from the opening pages that half of his quest will be journalistic and half of his quest will be deeply personal. In this review, I don't want to spoil Calvin's journey in search of some kind of relief from his immersion in the world's worst violence. Given that it's Greg Garrett at the helm of this adventure, it won't surprise his readers to know that, despite Calvin's journalistic skepticism and his personal rejection of abusive forms of religion, he discovers that the source of renewal he is desperately seeking is a form of spiritual renewal and resilience.
Yes, there is violence throughout this novel, because that's the quest on which this TV correspondent finds himself. But this also is a novel that leaves readers with a sense of fulfillment and reassurance as we reach the final pages. I wouldn't call it a happy ending. I would call it an authentically aware and very satisfying conclusion, which is rare in a lot of contemporary fiction.
I have known Greg as a colleague for several decades. I'm coming up on my 50th anniversary as a professional journalist, having reported primarily from the U.S. but occasionally from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I can attest that Greg has perfectly captured the heart, soul and experiences of many roving journalists I have known throughout my career. That's no small feat, because, as professional journalists, we usually find ourselves railing at the inaccuracies in the popular portrayals of our craft. In this case, I can recognize Cal as a real colleague.
I will stop here, except to say that this novel is set in July 2016 to the extent that each chapter heading reminds us of the date on which that chapter occurred. Greg did that intentionally to foreshadow tragic events still mourned in France in that month. Perhaps you already know what's coming when you see this novel's title and that date reference. Even if you're not aware of those references, you're in for a page-turning adventure.
Will our intrepid reporter find a source of resilience that can help him to survive these calamities that are scarring his soul? Well, read on!
Scholar, theologian and media veteran Greg Garrett is always a refreshing voice in the global conversation about how we can make our world a better place. A restless researcher and writer, his books surprise readers each time a new title is announced. His previous book, which I also highly recommend, is "A Long, Long Way—Hollywood's Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation." In spring 2023, he has given us this novel, "Bastille Day," and later this year he will launch a book about one of his mentors: James Baldwin.
The R-words: resilience, renewal and reconciliation are themes that run throughout his 20-or-so books, because both his fiction and his nonfiction are shaped by his own journey in faith. That journey has led him to ordination as an Episcopal priest and an appointment as the "canon theologian" occasionally is in residence at the American Cathedral in Paris.
And that means literally "in residence" at the Cathedral for some weeks each year. As his novel is launching this spring, Greg has enjoyed doing Zooms with readers and interviewers from an "apartment" in that cathedral where he and his wife Jeanie are staying in May 2023. That apartment, which I enjoyed seeing as I Zoomed with Greg this month for an author interview, looks more like a stone-walled cell in the Tower of London than what we would think of as a living space. But that same Cathedral tower apartment-space also is one of the many real-life settings in Paris that readers will enter in "Bastille Day."
Greg's training as a researcher led him to explore every corner of France that is featured in this new novel. And, without spoiling the suspense of the novel, several spaces in and around the American Cathedral are part of this adventure. What other locations crop up in "Bastille Day"? For example, Greg's main character is a network TV correspondent who likes to visit Harry's Bar, made famous by Ernest Hemingway and other celebrities. Throughout the novel, the river Seine itself becomes the setting for several dramatic scenes and Greg also takes us to the site of a major terrorist attack in France. As a TV correspondent, the main character Calvin has developed a specialty in covering global terrorism and he is sent to Paris by his network with that assignment.
Even though he's already got scars from this chosen specialty, Calvin accepts the assignment. So, we know from the opening pages that half of his quest will be journalistic and half of his quest will be deeply personal. In this review, I don't want to spoil Calvin's journey in search of some kind of relief from his immersion in the world's worst violence. Given that it's Greg Garrett at the helm of this adventure, it won't surprise his readers to know that, despite Calvin's journalistic skepticism and his personal rejection of abusive forms of religion, he discovers that the source of renewal he is desperately seeking is a form of spiritual renewal and resilience.
Yes, there is violence throughout this novel, because that's the quest on which this TV correspondent finds himself. But this also is a novel that leaves readers with a sense of fulfillment and reassurance as we reach the final pages. I wouldn't call it a happy ending. I would call it an authentically aware and very satisfying conclusion, which is rare in a lot of contemporary fiction.
I have known Greg as a colleague for several decades. I'm coming up on my 50th anniversary as a professional journalist, having reported primarily from the U.S. but occasionally from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I can attest that Greg has perfectly captured the heart, soul and experiences of many roving journalists I have known throughout my career. That's no small feat, because, as professional journalists, we usually find ourselves railing at the inaccuracies in the popular portrayals of our craft. In this case, I can recognize Cal as a real colleague.
I will stop here, except to say that this novel is set in July 2016 to the extent that each chapter heading reminds us of the date on which that chapter occurred. Greg did that intentionally to foreshadow tragic events still mourned in France in that month. Perhaps you already know what's coming when you see this novel's title and that date reference. Even if you're not aware of those references, you're in for a page-turning adventure.
Will our intrepid reporter find a source of resilience that can help him to survive these calamities that are scarring his soul? Well, read on!
November 23, 2023
Summary: A brief love affair with a beautiful Muslim woman who he rescues from a suicide leads Cal Jones to come to terms with losses and traumatic memories and to discover that he is not alone.
Brave. And broken. Like James Bond. That is how Calvin Jones describes himself. Jones had been a war correspondent in Iraq where both his father and driver Khalid died in bomb attacks. He blamed himself for Khalid. He fled to the security of working at a local news station. For ten years. Life was good. He was in a serious relationship with Kelly McNair, an interior designer. They looked good together. Sex was pretty good. Then, before his eyes at a Black Lives Matter rally five police die including the officer he was riding with, who he watches bleed out before his eyes. The man had protected him with his life. And all the dreams, never distant, came back.
Rob, a fellow correspondent, sensing the troubled state of a former colleague invites him to join Rob’s news agency in Paris to cover terror attacks in Europe. He arrives the Monday before Bastille Day (July 14) in 2016. While waiting to meet Rob in Harry’s New York Bar he meets a beautiful Muslim woman, Nadia, highly educated but unhappy. In days she will be married to a Saudi millionaire, an arranged marriage that will greatly benefit her family. Except she doesn’t want this marriage and has contemplated suicide, jumping off a bridge into the Seine. As they part, he gives her his business card. Call, if she needs to talk. He doesn’t expect to hear from her. The marriage is in five days.
Out on a run, he receives a text. She is at the bridge, ready to jump. By providence, he is near, and when she jumps, he goes after her, rescues her, and takes her back to his apartment to dry off. And so begins an improbable love affair. He realizes that he never loved Kelly and that he does love this woman and doesn’t want her to marry the millionaire, even as she grapples with the implications for her family, herself, and even other Saudi women, if she refuses to take the burqah.
Amid all this, the Nice truck attack occurs, in which a Muslim, shouting Allahu-akbar (“God is greater”), drove a truck for a mile down a boulevard crowded with Bastille Day celebrants, killing or injuring 500. Cal is sent along with cameraman Ahmed, to cover the attack. It surfaces all the memories, the trauma, the anger. And he takes it out on Nadia, forgetting all he has learned of her and other honorable Muslim friends. Too late, he realizes how he has wronged the woman he loved and desperately tries to communicate. Silence.
He is a wreck. Drinking too much. Barely holding it together. Yet loved. By his Uncle Jack in Texas who would hop on a plane in a moment, talks straight sense. He and his wife pray like crazy. By Rob and his wife, going through a rough patch in their own marriage. By a former military chaplain and by Clarice, the dean of the American cathedral. And by Allison, an attractive lesbian and good friend. They have faith when Cal has lost his. No cliches. Presence. Honesty. Love.
Cal will need it. To face the complicated relationship with his deceased father. His guilt over Khalid. Over the police officer. Over Kelly who he does not love. He is broken and needs to find “brave” within it. Especially with Nadia who he can’t bear to lose despite the obligations she faces.
This is an adult novel from a Christian publisher. There is sex outside of marriage, though not graphically portrayed. There is violence that is graphically described. There is also a quietly compelling Episcopal community (as well as Uncle Jack) who make space to include Cal in their journey as far as he will go. He is both skittish from a fundamentalist youth, and broken from the horrors he has seen, including the horror he sees in himself. We wait to see how brave will he be.
Greg Garrett offers a finely drawn story occuring in the space of a week, peopled with characters we come to love, including Frederick the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar. We consider Christian-Muslim relations, in ways integral to, but never overshadowing, the plot. The dialogue is never trite, but reflects people who care about their lives and those of others, wrestling with fraught choice, life’s ambiguities, and the unanswered questions of suffering and loss. I will be thinking about Cal, Nadia and their friends for awhile…
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Brave. And broken. Like James Bond. That is how Calvin Jones describes himself. Jones had been a war correspondent in Iraq where both his father and driver Khalid died in bomb attacks. He blamed himself for Khalid. He fled to the security of working at a local news station. For ten years. Life was good. He was in a serious relationship with Kelly McNair, an interior designer. They looked good together. Sex was pretty good. Then, before his eyes at a Black Lives Matter rally five police die including the officer he was riding with, who he watches bleed out before his eyes. The man had protected him with his life. And all the dreams, never distant, came back.
Rob, a fellow correspondent, sensing the troubled state of a former colleague invites him to join Rob’s news agency in Paris to cover terror attacks in Europe. He arrives the Monday before Bastille Day (July 14) in 2016. While waiting to meet Rob in Harry’s New York Bar he meets a beautiful Muslim woman, Nadia, highly educated but unhappy. In days she will be married to a Saudi millionaire, an arranged marriage that will greatly benefit her family. Except she doesn’t want this marriage and has contemplated suicide, jumping off a bridge into the Seine. As they part, he gives her his business card. Call, if she needs to talk. He doesn’t expect to hear from her. The marriage is in five days.
Out on a run, he receives a text. She is at the bridge, ready to jump. By providence, he is near, and when she jumps, he goes after her, rescues her, and takes her back to his apartment to dry off. And so begins an improbable love affair. He realizes that he never loved Kelly and that he does love this woman and doesn’t want her to marry the millionaire, even as she grapples with the implications for her family, herself, and even other Saudi women, if she refuses to take the burqah.
Amid all this, the Nice truck attack occurs, in which a Muslim, shouting Allahu-akbar (“God is greater”), drove a truck for a mile down a boulevard crowded with Bastille Day celebrants, killing or injuring 500. Cal is sent along with cameraman Ahmed, to cover the attack. It surfaces all the memories, the trauma, the anger. And he takes it out on Nadia, forgetting all he has learned of her and other honorable Muslim friends. Too late, he realizes how he has wronged the woman he loved and desperately tries to communicate. Silence.
He is a wreck. Drinking too much. Barely holding it together. Yet loved. By his Uncle Jack in Texas who would hop on a plane in a moment, talks straight sense. He and his wife pray like crazy. By Rob and his wife, going through a rough patch in their own marriage. By a former military chaplain and by Clarice, the dean of the American cathedral. And by Allison, an attractive lesbian and good friend. They have faith when Cal has lost his. No cliches. Presence. Honesty. Love.
Cal will need it. To face the complicated relationship with his deceased father. His guilt over Khalid. Over the police officer. Over Kelly who he does not love. He is broken and needs to find “brave” within it. Especially with Nadia who he can’t bear to lose despite the obligations she faces.
This is an adult novel from a Christian publisher. There is sex outside of marriage, though not graphically portrayed. There is violence that is graphically described. There is also a quietly compelling Episcopal community (as well as Uncle Jack) who make space to include Cal in their journey as far as he will go. He is both skittish from a fundamentalist youth, and broken from the horrors he has seen, including the horror he sees in himself. We wait to see how brave will he be.
Greg Garrett offers a finely drawn story occuring in the space of a week, peopled with characters we come to love, including Frederick the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar. We consider Christian-Muslim relations, in ways integral to, but never overshadowing, the plot. The dialogue is never trite, but reflects people who care about their lives and those of others, wrestling with fraught choice, life’s ambiguities, and the unanswered questions of suffering and loss. I will be thinking about Cal, Nadia and their friends for awhile…
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
April 1, 2023
My Grandma Irene, of Blessed Memory, was one of the most devout Christians I have ever known. She somehow got her hands on a copy of Free Bird, my first novel, although the family had done our level best to keep her away from it.
She got about one page into it, threw the book across the room, and called me, furious. (If a tiny old woman can be furious. It was like being kicked by an angry hobbit.)
"I am so angry," she said. "So angry. At your publisher. For making you put those bad words in your book."
My grandmother did not understand that Christians could make art about doubt or pain. That sometimes bad words are the appropriate expressions of powerful grief, loss, or anger.
She would not be able to understand how Bastille Day, which is most certainly R-rated, could debut as the top new work of contemporary Christian fiction in America on Amazon.
(She probably would not understand Amazon, either. But that's a whole ‘nother story.)
My whole writing life has been a balancing act between the literary world and the life of faith, between being misunderstood by one group or the other because I'm not strictly one thing. This is not a complaint. Just a fact.
There are secular readers who can't understand how a Pulitzer Prize-winning author like Bob Butler could call me a remarkable novelist if my big thematic concerns include doubt and faith.
And there are religious readers who can't understand how my book could be "Christian" if it includes violence, sexuality, or "bad words."
The climax of Free Bird—which was written when I was not very Christian—is a confession to an actual Catholic priest. The last words of Cycling—written when I was not very Christian—are a meditation on grace.
My great and lasting influences are people like James Baldwin, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Marilynne Robinson, people of faith who were also trying to create art that told them and their readers something about themselves, the world, and, maybe, God.
Thomas Merton said, if you're going to be a poet and an apostle, then you'd better be a great poet, or your apostolate will be ridiculed.
And James Baldwin simply said, "I want to be an honest man and a good writer."
So be forewarned: there are bad words in Bastille Day.
It is R-Rated.
Like the Bible.
Like life.
But like the Bible--and like life--there are journeys toward love, compassion, courage, and, yes, faith to be observed and celebrated.
I am a Christian novelist. Once I thought I had to be one or the other of those. Now I know: my strength and my joy come because I am both--Greg
Baylor University Baylor University English Department The American Cathedral in Paris The Episcopal Church Paraclete Press Fabled Bookshop & Cafe
#writing #amwriting #novel #story #canontheologian
She got about one page into it, threw the book across the room, and called me, furious. (If a tiny old woman can be furious. It was like being kicked by an angry hobbit.)
"I am so angry," she said. "So angry. At your publisher. For making you put those bad words in your book."
My grandmother did not understand that Christians could make art about doubt or pain. That sometimes bad words are the appropriate expressions of powerful grief, loss, or anger.
She would not be able to understand how Bastille Day, which is most certainly R-rated, could debut as the top new work of contemporary Christian fiction in America on Amazon.
(She probably would not understand Amazon, either. But that's a whole ‘nother story.)
My whole writing life has been a balancing act between the literary world and the life of faith, between being misunderstood by one group or the other because I'm not strictly one thing. This is not a complaint. Just a fact.
There are secular readers who can't understand how a Pulitzer Prize-winning author like Bob Butler could call me a remarkable novelist if my big thematic concerns include doubt and faith.
And there are religious readers who can't understand how my book could be "Christian" if it includes violence, sexuality, or "bad words."
The climax of Free Bird—which was written when I was not very Christian—is a confession to an actual Catholic priest. The last words of Cycling—written when I was not very Christian—are a meditation on grace.
My great and lasting influences are people like James Baldwin, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Marilynne Robinson, people of faith who were also trying to create art that told them and their readers something about themselves, the world, and, maybe, God.
Thomas Merton said, if you're going to be a poet and an apostle, then you'd better be a great poet, or your apostolate will be ridiculed.
And James Baldwin simply said, "I want to be an honest man and a good writer."
So be forewarned: there are bad words in Bastille Day.
It is R-Rated.
Like the Bible.
Like life.
But like the Bible--and like life--there are journeys toward love, compassion, courage, and, yes, faith to be observed and celebrated.
I am a Christian novelist. Once I thought I had to be one or the other of those. Now I know: my strength and my joy come because I am both--Greg
Baylor University Baylor University English Department The American Cathedral in Paris The Episcopal Church Paraclete Press Fabled Bookshop & Cafe
#writing #amwriting #novel #story #canontheologian
October 21, 2024
Cal, a journalist, takes a job offered by a friend in Paris in 2016. He is dealing with PTSD resulting from seeing his photographer being killed by a child with a bomb strapped to her body in Iraq. His survivor's guilt is only one of the events in his life that has led to his accepting this tchance of escape in Paris. Garrett is masterful at character development. Cal meets a young Muslim woman who is marrying a man she has never met in just two days. This is a read that will keep you pondering forgiveness, friendship, shame and atonement.
October 7, 2023
Delightful story about complicated love, finding community, and living faith.
Grittier Mitford in Paris.
Grittier Mitford in Paris.
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