The Wake Of Forgiveness: A Literary Historical Western – A Dark Family Saga of 1895 Texas

by Bruce Machart

Reminiscent of Kent Haruf and Cormac McCarthy, Bruce Machart’s debut novel is a dark family saga set in the American Southwest.   On a moonless Texas night in 1895, an ambitious young landowner suffers the loss of “the only woman he’s ever been fond of” when his wife dies during childbirth with the couple’s fourth son, Karel. The boy is forever haunted by thoughts of the mother he never knew, by the bloodshot blame in his father’s eyes, and permanently marked by the yoke he and his brothers are forced to wear to plow the family fields. From an early age, Karel proves so talented on horseback that his father enlists him to ride in acreage-staked horseraces against his neighbors. In the winter of 1910, Karel rides in the ultimate high-stakes race against a powerful Spanish patriarch and his alluring hanging in the balance are his father’s fortune, his brothers' futures, and his own fate.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Book Club, Historical, Literary Fiction, Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 2010

About the author

BRUCE MACHART's fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, Story, One-Story, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West. A graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University, he currently lives and teaches in Houston.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

fulfilling my 2019 goal to read (at least) one book each month that has been digitally moldering, unread, on my NOOK for years and years and years.

sometimes i find i don’t have much to say about a book when it comes time for the reviewing of it. and i know no one’s holding a gun to my head saying “you must review every book you read!” and there are 100+ books on my “review pending” shelf that i still 100% intend to review and i could just let this one drift into that herd without any real consequences, but regardless of the lack of gun-to-head/penalties for not reviewing, it has become somewhat of a compulsion to dissect the books i read - it helps me fixate them in my brain, to organize my reactions, to understand my own reading preferences, and serve as a kind of closure, so - here we are.

i just… didn’t love it.

and it should be exactly the kind of book i love - all manner of flawed people populating a western-themed family saga full of rough living, misguided decisions, regret and revenge and tragedies, and it opens with one of the most horrifically bloody childbirth scenes i’ve ever read, which squeamishly thrilled me out of the gate with the what’s-to-come, but although this was a beautifully written novel, the actual story left me feeling a little flat.

and i’m not sure why.

although it covers thirty years of a family’s travails, the events are small and can be condensed into: suffering breeds suffering, cruelty and neglect breed cruelty and neglect. or a lesson: don't let horse races determine your future.

the characters are unsympathetic, which is to be expected in grit lit/westerns, but i'm someone who wants their antiheroes to be truly antiheroic, not just... commonplace shitty. karel has plenty of cause for complaint about his upbringing and the path his life took, but he doesn't become a 'burn the world down' figure, just a dude who betrays his wife, is lousy to his lover, and yearns for the girl who got away and married his brother. and although it's undeniable that he was wronged as a child and he was doomed from the start, he's largely numb and passive and uncompelling as a character, and it made it difficult for me to hope things would all work out for him in the end.

i've been wanting to read machart for a while now, and there's enough stellar writing in this debut to keep me on the line for his later work - i was just hoping for more in the way of character and story.

this 'review' is a flop, but - hey - maybe my own later work will be better!

come to my blog!

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulse buy at Barnes and Noble. I ignored the book at first in favor of looking at the books around it, but then I caught the words “Tim O’Brien” during a cursory glance at a book blurb on the cover. One of my rules in life is to pick up anything with Tim O’Brien’s name on it and buy it immediately, no questions asked. To date, this rule has served me well and The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart is no exception.

Set in Texas at the dawn of the 20th century, the novel focuses on the Skala family, which consists of an immigrant father and his four motherless sons. Vaclav’s wife, Klara, dies while giving birth to their fourth son, Karel, and the book focuses on the physical and emotional marks these men carry as a result of her death. Despite her early death, the shadow of Klara haunts every page. In a cruel and unforgiving landscape, Klara would have served as the buffer between the physical and emotional demands of pioneer life, between the immigrant and his new homeland, between father and son, and between the sons themselves. Without her, these men throw themselves against each other, against the landscape, and against life itself with a brutal tenacity that can only be born of intense pain and loss.

After the loss of his wife, Vaclav Skala, an ascetic man by nature, becomes even harder and more unforgiving in his dealings with the world. To spare his fine racing horses the detrimental effects of fieldwork, he instead hitches his four sons to the plow. Their time in the harness has left the boys with a peculiar deformity: they all have twisted necks that symbolize their skewed view of the world inflicted upon them by their father. Of all the boys, none are as warped as Karel. Having never known his mother and carrying the burden of guilt for her death, Karel is nonetheless Vaclav’s pride as Karel is a gifted horseback rider whose skills have won his father many a high-stakes gamble. As the novel goes on, the narrative moves back and forth between the story of Karel as a young boy and Karel as a grown man, now alienated from his brothers. The circumstances leading to the severing of the connection with his siblings are revealed as the book goes on and heighten the suspense as the novel moves toward its satisfying resolution.

Machart has created a tragedy that is epic in scope and is often reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s best work (in particular, All the Pretty Horses comes to mind). The language is poetic and so frequently captures the heart of the moment or the quality of the landscape with such a perfect turn of phrase that I often went back and re-read certain lines just to savor them. Another point in Machart’s favor is that his characters are complex and never watered-down; these are hard, often cruel men, but that doesn’t mean they are completely devoid of kindness, poeticism, or intelligence. They are victims of a lifestyle and a landscape that naturally cripples the finest points of humanity to ensure survival in a merciless environment. That any of the characters retain even a shred of their capacity for forgiveness is the ultimate triumph.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweeping epic saga across 30 years of a family, brothers and a father and their deceased mother.
Wonderfully layered out in some of the most eloquent words strung together in a sentence.

This guy can really write, literally unheard of by the reading population. A must read this novel deserves immediate attention by the populace, the author has crafted a story that was such a joy to read captivating, deep sense of meaning and place.
I am thinking along the lines of Train Dreams by Denis Johnson and Volt stories by Alan Heathcock with some great descriptive sentences and metaphors like that of James Lee Burke's writing.

Those who love horses will love the beautiful animals that play an important role in the backdrop of this period piece set in the unforgiving Texan landscape from the between the late 1800's and to the early 1900's. It takes you from the death of a mother during child birth and the genesis and birth of brothers to their relationship with their father to their finding of a companion and their findings of lust and love. Through the bitter ugliness of fighting and rivalry amongst brothers and fathers, to the steps of reconciliation and gratitude to the greater things than man holds in their midst.
They fall, they err but will they forgive for the past and move forward with hope and love?


This is possibly another retelling of a kind of Greek tragedy in fiction.
Motherhood and fatherhood. Sons and daughters these are important characters in this story their flaws, their triumphs and their hopes and challenges.
A memorable story on love between spouses and kin those lost and that could have been and love in lust and most importantly love that will be newly re-discovered as the story ends for life, for humanity.
Sacrifice,love and trust are very important elements that string through this story from beginning to end.
One not to be missed beautiful prose of staggering violence and beauty that could be carved out into trees for generations to come to splendor at.
A few excerpts below some more to come in a few days.

"The townsfolk would assume, from this day forward, that Klara's death had turned a gentle man bitter and hard, but the truth, Vaclav knew, was that her absence only rendered him, again, the man he'd been before he'd met her, one only her proximity had ever softened."

"men are eroded of kindness by the slow, interminable friction of their unrealized desires."
"He gathers the horse's lead and puts a foot in the stirrup, wondering just how in the hell a man is supposed to go about asking the dead to forgive him for ever finding comfort at another woman's breast. Or for going on living at all when she could not. Or for doing his father's delirious bidding and leaving him to die in the mud alone. Or for leaving their children so long at odds with one another in the world. And then he wonders if he's just done it, if it could be that simple."

"reckoned that family was another. A man couldn't any more choose which one he was born into than he could will it to stay together when so many things abraded and raveled the fibers that were meant to keep it bound. Try to hold it all together with force, with a harness and a hard hand the way their father had, and it grew so thick with the cordage of resentment that you couldn't even get your hands around it."

"My father says that if we look for ourselves in others, we're likely to find someone we don't recognize."

"His hearing, after these five years of marriage, was attuned to her voice in the way common only to husbands who adore their wives and those who lie to them with regularity. To Karel's mind, he practised the latter because of the former, because Sophie was a good woman, kind and hearty and generous, so much so, in fact, that he suspected she knew when he was less than honest, less than wholly hers, and that she endured the indiscretions the way a good horse will endure shoeing and hard harness work, blinded to everything but the promise of brushstrokes and oats, of kindness and comfort. With eyes affixed only to a future worth forsaking the present for."

"In the distance, coyotes have found their voices in the damp promise of weather, calling out as if in answer to the inconsiderate onset of cold. Visibly agitated along the fence line, the horses blow and complain, their hides shuddering violently with the worried work of their muscles. To the west, when Villasenor's surrey rolls dark and polished as a hearse to the gate, the sky hangs swollen and sickly above the distant horizon as if the whole mass of the heavens has been wounded and gauzed with clouds and backlit feebly by the diminishing moon."

"He watches the girl leaning forward over her horse's neck, her hair falling crimped in wet ripples down her back. Even on a stationery horse, her weight is centred over her bent knees, her spine held straight. There's a seasoned confidence to her, he thinks, and she carries it in her body, in her upright and unflagging posture, a solidness in her legs and shoulders that is almost masculine. But then there is the breathtaking taper of her back, it's sudden slope into a waist so slight that Karel feels certain it's smaller around than a man's hatband. There's the wide, smooth flare of her hips. If she were reclined such that you could run a finger along the side of her body from ribs to thighs, it might put you in mind of a single, perfect valley found in a landscape of irregular, rolling foothills, of a horizon you'd gladly ride all day to reach. Sure enough, she's her fathers child. She has his olive skin, his dark hair and eyes, his easy assuredness, but one look at her would make any man wonder how lovely was her mother."

"And then shes running hard and away, hugging the perimeter of the trees as she widens her lead and whips her horse, her braided hair flung back and black and dancing playfully in the air behind her shoulders.
Alive in Karel's mind is only a whisper of suspicion, one muted by the astonishing beauty of what he's seen, and he smiles at the fortune of having borne witness to something so graceful and yet so capable and strong, to a girl turned woman before his eyes, to that woman flashing her white teeth at him, smiling because, for her, as or Karel, there is nothing quite so thrilling as a race run on horseback, nothing filled more with wonder, nothing so able to convince you that you are flesh and blood and alive in the world that offers so few joys other than this running."

"He has seen father and son both spilling blood, the exuberance of the crowd around them-he is bearing witness now to something far more regrettable than a race for land and bridegrooms' hands. This is the bloodlust of brothers, the vengeful rage of the father, all of it born out and somehow flawless in its wickedness, like some depraved reenactment of Genesis staged solely for the amusement of reprobates. How far? He wonders. How far may we follow one ill-chosen and descending path?"

"Whiskey takes no notice, moves forward, his hooves splashing in the standing water of the pasture, and Karel shudders against the unexpected rise of penitential guilt. He has seen, he knows, something he was not meant to see, and on a night when all but the nocturnal are deprived of sight, and on the skin of his arms he wears the prickle of conscience-laden exhilaration, the same as he'd felt when, as a boy skipping rocks on a summer Sunday, he'd stumbled across three bathing schoolgirls in the swollen creek, their sun-flushed skin appointed with beads of water and a smooth newness from which Karel couldn't pull his eyes-the arc of their spines when they bent to splash water onto one another, the dark mystery of their nipples, so different from his own, wind kissed and erect and upturned on their budding breast.
Karel smiles and shakes his head. How is it that seeing the priest who baptised him could occasion memories of naked girls? How is it that anything ever gives rise to what it does instead of what it should?
After half a mile spent all but blind on his horse, when the rain lets up further without stopping altogether, Karel's eyes find some discernible depth in the darkness. Whiskey blows, his hide rippling beneath the saddle, and Karel breathes through his nose, inhaling the sweet, musky smell of wet horsehair. His eye is puffed up near to closed, aching still, but only as a muted throbbing deep beneath the skin. There's something to be taken from this, he thinks. Something about the body, something about the eyes, about the flesh and the bones and the heart. About how they want to adjust, to heal, to see and feel. And they do, he thinks, if never entirely."

"The horse exhales with a shudder, its breath coming in laboured bursts of steam, the hollow music of the rain striking its hide like that of a wet-skinned drum played only with the fingertips of children. Karel has never thought of what he felt for the animal as love, and even now he isn't sure that's the word he would choose. But it is certainly something akin to affection, something as fluttering and warm as the fine quivering of the horse's musculature now at work beneath its damp hide. The trouble with animals, with caring for beasts, is that, if you do it very long at all, you have to witness the end of something you've seen born. Karel curses under his breath. He thinks of the rifle leaning by the kitchen door, of the long walk through the rain and mud he'll have to take so that, when he returns, he can do so equipped for a loud and necessary and violent kindness.
The horse, absent the heavy breathing, sprawls so quietly, its pain sustained without much of any outward complaint. Karel marvels at it, at the inborn capacity for such silent suffering."

"He considers the countless times he's imagined his mother, the length of her hair, the crinkling pleat work of her skirts, the soft blue consolation of her eyes. He'd never seen any of it, but now he can't check himself, can't help but think that he might very well have heard her voice, that he might have known the sound of her even from within her body, that she might have sung to her unborn while she went about her chores or cried out in those final moments of her labor pains, and that, though he can't recall it or reproduce it, he's been carrying it around inside of him, the memory of it, an actual memory of her, a real memory, for the whole of his life."

Review with book trailer @http://more2read.com/review/the-wake-of-forgiveness-by-bruce-machart/

[Juliana Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully stark and well-written prose, but a difficult story that left me somewhat unfulfilled (4 stars)

This book took me much longer to read than most books, and I cannot quite put my finger on why. What I do know is that Machart is a very talented writer whose prose often read like stark and lyrical poetry and sometimes reach the quality of genius. Sounds dramatic, I know, but as a writer myself I was impressed - and envious - of his talent with the written word.

Machart's characters are compelling, if not always likable - this last being one of the reasons that I think it took me a little longer than usual to finish the book. Karel the boy arouses a variety of emotions in the reader, but none of them negative, which was not at all the case with Karel the man, whom I found unsympathetic and unlikable. My feelings towards him grew increasingly complex as I learned more about both the boy and the man; he's complicated and like everything and everyone else in this novel, while the words describing him are clear-cut, he himself is anything but.

One somewhat side-note is that for those who read a summary and think that a love story is a big part of this novel, I would warn them that it is not. Yes, Karel's longing for Graciela seems to haunt him, but to me it either felt inauthentic or as if Karel had made his longing and its importance bigger things than they actually were - and maybe realizes this in the end. Either way, none of it felt like a love story to me.

The overall plot isn't really much of one, with the variety of the novel focusing on the back and forth between the flashbacks and the present, providing the reader with a picture of Karel Skala, his life, and what led him to this point in it. There is a subplot that moves things along and brings about a change in his world, but in the end, nothing is really "resolved." Karel sees certain things that he did not allow himself to before and there is the possibility or promise of change, but there is no real finishing.

While this lack of an ending left me feeling somewhat unfulfilled, I do not necessarily think that this should have been changed. In a way, I do not think another type of ending would have been appropriate, given the tone and tenor of the rest of the novel. Although I did not feel wholly satisfied, that feeling seemed fitting for the novel, for the story it tells, and for the people it portrays. The best books often leave us somewhat unsettled or off-kilter and I don't think that being uncomfortable is always a bad thing.

Bottom Line
Know that it's a hard book - emotionally, not experientially - so be prepared: if you're wanting a calming and soothing novel after a long day at work, leave The Wake of Forgiveness on the nightstand for another time. Make sure that other time eventually comes though, because for anyone who enjoys beautiful writing and compelling characters, this book is a must-read.
[This review is of an advanced copy format of the book]

(Written on February 7, 2011)

[Felice · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you get when you mix Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Shakespearean tragedy and an exceptional cover with homesteaders? Wait, wait, wait we'll be adding in strong, evocative writing too. No need to guess my friend. It's The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart.

Take a look at that cover. Isn't it beautiful? It's smart too. Everyone loves a horse. It is not a gender specific symbol. The photo is powerful so the consumer/reader can expect drama but it isn't overwhelmingly masculine or threatening. You don't immediately think "Oh this is about male characters and that's not what I read" and stroll on. You pick it up to see what it's about and that alone is a win.

In Lavaca County, Texas 1895 Czech immigrant Vaclav Skala is left alone to raise his four sons and work his land. His wife has died giving birth to their son Kaval. We don't know what Vaclav was like prior to his wife's death but afterward he is a heartless man obsessed with success. His sons are worked so hard their necks are permanently bent from plowing. He is a brutal man with one Achilles heel, horses. When his son Kaval displays an aptitude for horse racing, Vaclav tries to use it to increase his wealth. This is fathers verses sons and brother verses brother on an operatic scale but never unbelievable.

The writing in Wake is gorgeous. It's the great strength of this novel that these emotionally harsh lives are described in wonderful language. You can feel the texture of the wind, smell the tobacco and wrap yourself up in the bitter complexity of the family relationships. Machart doesn't allow the poetry of his writing to interferer with the action. Wake has the prerequisite amount of hustle and bustle for a western it just describes all that activity with juicy vigor.

All of the westerns I read are judged up against Lonesome Dove--a perfect novel. How did The Wake of Forgiveness match up? They are very different books despite the commonality of setting. Lonesome is a celebration of people. Wake is a study of Fate. For better or worse Lonesome Dove is my benchmark--oh well. The Wake of Forgiveness is no Lonesome Dove but it is very good and holds the promise of a writer capable of a Lonesome Dove of his own.

[David Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Against expectations, I read this book as rapidly as I could, following its inevitable word cadences, complex and exquisitely honed. On nearly every page I wanted to rush forward, but the structure and evolution of each crafted sentence kept me from it and taught me a reader's patience. In this way it is close to the first book of Cormac McCarthy's brilliant trilogy, so strong and compulsive. But in its own way, this book is more furious, darkened and storm-driven by a human hardness even McCarthy does not touch. As I read to the end early this morning, I recognized that it is Faulkner whose power is echoed in the prose, in the fabric of guilt and cruelty, and the inner chasms created by blood relationships. And so I was lost to it: if Faulkner had written about west Texas, he might have written this. Even taken up a second time, this book would run like a stallion, and I would struggle to hang on.

From page 271: "Fire was one of so many things that could render a man helpless, and now, as Karel reached the corral fence and circled around to the gate, his brothers' eyes unblinking and tepid and fixed on him, he reckoned that family was another. A man couldn't any more choose which one he was born into than he could will it to stay together when so many things abraded and raveled the fibers that were meant to keep it bound. Try to hold it all together with force, with a harness and a hard hand the way their father had, and it grew so thick with the cordage of resentment that you couldn't even get your hands around it."

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a western in the broadest sense. It is really literature. The language is lush, exquisite, and unforgettable. The work is the debut (!) novel of a young man, but reads as if it were written by a much older man. If I tell you the book is black…dark like I have rarely read, you may be reluctant to dip your head in. But the title has the word forgiveness in it, and it is so. Forgiveness that falls like drops of rain on a parched and cracked soil. It is so unexpected, I didn’t trust it at first. But as one cruelty begets another, one kindness begets another, and so it is with forgiveness. It’s a lesson we need to see again and again to believe.

The main character, Karel, is the youngest of four brothers born to a Czech immigrant farming in Texas at the turn of the twentieth century. Karel’s birth killed his mother, leaving the family warped for the cooling comfort of a loving hand. Life was hard and could be cruel: the boys pulled the plow in the crusty ground until there was a permanent cant to their necks. The family has amassed a large landholding from neighboring farmers when Karel wins land bets jockeying ranch horses. One day a wealthy Spaniard with three nubile daughters makes a race wager.

There will be inevitable comparisons with Cormac McCarthy. Hardscrabble lives lived on the border is the same. The density of feeling is the same. The darkness is the same. I would like to make the case that McCarthy’s work has a lyricism when describing the nature, and the natural way of things, that seems age-old and universal while Wake... focusses more on the blackness in family relations, in men’s hearts. That is not to say Machart doesn’t “do” nature. He is more than skilled in describing the rain, the territory. But nature is not a character, the way it is so central in McCarthy’s work. Machart’s “black”:

“If anything, this was what Karel missed about the company of his brothers—their hardness and loathing had shored up his own, given him title to his own hatred. But there was something else: The older boys had also admired their father—his stubbornness and sharp tongue, the way he refused to beckon the help of other men—and so had Karel, and it was this admiration that he couldn’t cotton to. The reverence for a man you surely hated, the hard plaque of respect that all the bad blood couldn’t scour from your heart. This, too, he and his brothers had shared, and the bile of a common indigestion that rose from the two brands of unsuited feelings had been easier to swallow when there were others around who were burning inside with the same struggle to choke it down.”

Wake... reminds me of a New York Review of Books book that will be republished in 70 years to accolades. “He tells it like it was….” they will say, “A master of writing style…” It is classic, in the ways authors with great skill can paint pictures that seem indelible. But there are reasons why we would not want to wait 70 years to read it. We need to carry the lesson of forgiveness with us every day.

If you read and liked this book, I urge you to pick up another novel by a debut author that I was reminded of while reading this book: American Rust by Philipp Meyer, published by Random House. ...Rust won numerous awards (New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Economist Book of the Year (2009), A Washington Post Top Ten Book of (2009), Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of (2009), Newsweek's "Best. Books. Ever"), but I don't think it made the bestseller lists. Don't let these great books languish.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a lot of spit, hawking, and swilling going on in Bruce Machart’s debut novel The Wake of Forgiveness. Machart has been compared to Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner, and Hemingway in the same breath and the book has won several awards. It’s been described as a man’s book, down right gritty, but this woman liked it just fine.
It’s a family story without a lot of direct female presence but the ramifications of a woman’s role are key to the story. The story begins in 1895 in what the author thought was a fictitious town, Dalton, Texas. The labor to bear the fourth son of Vaclav Skala, opens the book and sets the tone for what's to come. Karel lives, his mother, yet more importantly, Vaclav’s wife, dies. Left with 4 boys to raise, it’s clear that Klara’s death has changed things irreparably but not quite as clear how things might have been if she had lived. How much of Vaclav’s character is set by this event is not certain Would he have been the same cruel, violent man if Klara had lived?
The four brothers grow; their father acquires land, often by pitting Karel and his prized horse Whiskey against other landowners in a race for acreage. Mexican land owner, Guillermo Villasenor, challenges Skala to a race that will net the winner either land (win-Skala) or 3 husbands for his beautiful daughters (win-Villasenor). Skala and Villasenor are formidable opponents and the clash of their cultures is damning and damaging. One reviewer notes Skala takes pride only in his wealth and land, not his children unlike Villasenor who takes great pride in his daughters. I disagree. Villasenor's pride is self-serving. He treats his daughters as possessions and earns no respect from me.
Machart writes lengthy, tense descriptive passages which grab my attention. horseflesh has never been so vibrantly alive in any other book I've read. The violence is hard to read but suits the story well. I never feel it is gratuitous but it is brutal and could be hard to read.
I believe I saw this book first mentioned in Reading Group Choices and thought it sounded interesting. The title led me to believe that after riding the storm that there would be created an ebb of forgiveness. This resolution is subtle and may not be the same to each reader. All in all, an excellent read.

A huge thanks goes out to Trish, Paul and the librarians at BEA Librarian Shout Out for recommending this also!

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is the bloodlust of brothers, the vengeful rage of the father, all of it born out and somehow flawless in its wickedness, like some depraved reenactment of Genesis staged solely for the amusement of reprobates." -The Wake of Forgiveness

Every once in a great while you come across a book that does all the things you want a book to do. Prose so sumptuous you hold your breath through whole sections because breathing - even breathing - would disrupt the amazing way a thought is unfolding. A plot with absolutely no holes, that steps surely through event after inexorable event leading you through a story as deep as any Greek or Shakespearian classic. The Wake of Forgiveness is one of those books. It's a Texas- lean epic novel. The story of a Czech family led by a patriarch as cruel and driven as Ahab, and a family of boys physically and emotionally twisted and misshapen by the hard labor and rigid disciplines their father forces upon them.

The Wake of Forgiveness is about hard men with broken hearts, and intentions that may seem evil but are born out of harsh lives in a harsh environment. It is also about the only gentling agents in the environment - women and children. It's about how forgiveness can catch us in its wake, and bring us a little closer to shore, and most importantly, it's about what I think every great work of fiction is about - redemption that rises against all odds from soul breaking struggle.

Against what would seem to be all possibility Bruce Machart writes of these men with great affection because their actions, both gentle and monstrous, are motivated, and even seem necessary considering what has befallen them.

I'm going to re-read this one right away, and it's going to live on my shelves, handy for readings in the future.

Publication date: October 21, 2010

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ain't a woman ever been paid enough for all that gets taken from her..."
This harsh, violent portrayal of farm life in rural 1910 Texas is an intense read and definitely not for the faint of heart. Achingly desolate, much like the landscape, the story of the Skala family begins with a tragedy and ends with a brother's redemption. The Wake of Forgiveness, a debut novel by Bruce Machart will leave you feeling hopeful, an emotion nonexistent throughout this gripping drama.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't typically find much value in prose loaded with metaphors and similes but for some reason it worked.

if you're a Kent Haruf fan, you'll love this. if you've never read Haruf, read this book anyway (and read Haruf).

[Mark Matheson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminded me of the film McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) in its character-first anti-western deconstruction of masculinity. Long sentences here cascade with imagery that feels unique in their description, while remaining familiar in what’s being evoked. The story, too, is sprawling for a character study (though I found myself wanting a little more from the ending, despite its thematic relevance). Still, this is a book whose Texan grit comes off the page.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Family bonds, particularly between fathers and sons, and mothers and sons, are explored with great sorrow and depth in this elegiac and epic tale of the Skala family, hard-working Czech farmers in Lavaca County. In the fertile flat lands of South Texas, in the fictional town of Dalton, 1895, Karel Skala is the fourth son born to Vaclav and Klara, and the one that results in Klara's death. Vaclav's pain shuts him down, and he forsakes holding his son.

Instead, Vaclav treats Karel and his brothers like draught horses and works them to the bone on the farm. As Karel grows and develops into an apt horse rider and racer, Vaclav gambles land, and Karel rides to win. A particular race in 1910 squeezes the last morsel of strained loyalty and affection between Karel, his three brothers, and his father.

The story goes back and forth in time between 1895 and 1924, in a seamless and tension-building tale that is both heart stopping and lushly evocative. Machart writes like a veteran writer and is reminiscent of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, both for his brutal tale of family instability and his towering, metaphorical passages tying the land to the people, and the narrative of his social and moral themes surrounding the decay, anguish, and redemption of the human heart. Like McCarthy, Machart has an arresting, commanding sense of predator and prey:

"Across the creek along the far bank, near the tangle of water oak and pine roots and the deep impression of boot soles in the wet silt, she [the amber-eyed horned-owl] discerns the slightest distinction in the clustered dancing of bluestem spires, knowing by some sharp and instinctive insistence in the grainy fibers of her muscles that rain and wind bend the uppermost inches of grass blades while the scuttling of prey and the dragging of a tail will set the reeds to shivering upward from the tillers."

Machart's frequently long and undulating sentences are not awkward or burdensome, as his assured, poetic, and elegant style takes the reader deeper and more evocatively into the richness of the landscape and the texture of Karel's pain. Soon after the race of 1910, Karel quits riding, folds up into himself, and begins his own family and future without reconciling his past. The story brings the reader into key events in a well-paced manner that also teases out the facts gradually. The past and the present intersect in the denouement with an uncompromising and resolute exhilaration. Getting there allows the reader to accompany Karel into the territory of his tormented soul.

"It occurred to Karel that this was the way the whole county must see them, as the family that everyone but they themselves recognized as such, and the thought of being the kind of fool who called for fair weather when green clouds folded up in hail-bearing corrugations on the horizon wicked at him until he felt parched and withered and longing, like a cotton plant wilting in a month-long drought, for the unabated battering of that which might save him."

Whether it is the rich, metallic smell of rain; the mineral scent of flooded soil; a sun-struck fence; a moonlit winter pine; or stray swirls of cotton in the brisk, smoky air of a burning mesquite tree, Machart sears the images of his story so thoroughly that they will cascade down your spine and give you an electric buzz. I can open the book anywhere and return to eloquent passages that, even lifted from the story and taken independently will cause my heart to flutter. Compelling, unyielding, and utterly satisfying.

[Pierre Laurent · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, I really wanted to like this because hey, I love western, rugged landscapes and character exploration.

And I did like parts of it. The opening of the novel does a very good job in setting the stage and sketching the characters. There are also very interesting moments, both stylistically and in the studies of characters (if you're willing to suspend your disbelief and accept that farm-raised Karel is capable of such acumen translated in such detail.) Joe Knedlik's fantasizing about "Judith of Blue Lake Ranch" for instance is very interesting in its exploration of the character, the place of women in the West and a mise en abyme of the place of women in Western literature (which is also revelatory of the author's blind spot of his own clichéd female characters - more on that later.)

But alas... the characters are never really fleshed out: Karel is but a vessel for the author's stylistic explorations. Villaseñor and Vaclav Skala, possibly intended as each other's fold are but stereotypes of the evil lawless villain (Villaseñor) and the rugged loveless father. The Villaseñor girls have no names for most of them, and Stan, Addie and Thom have names but no real personality (we are told Thom takes after his father, and Stan is somewhat maternal.) As for women, they seem to exist within three categories: those who inspire desire (Elizka, young Graciela), those who don't (Sophie), and old widows/nurses. Sophie's role is limited to child-bearing, kolaches baking and accepting her husband's infidelities. Graciela has but two scenes: the horse-race that is but a metaphorical sex-scene, and the sex-scene in itself. Elizka only has the actual sex-scene.
My other issue is with the style. Although it sometimes reaches highly poetic places, most of the times the long-winded sentences feel tedious and the comparisons and metaphors feel out of place.
An example: "On his face he wears the impatient disinterest of an undertaker at a late wake. The tick beneath his eye, too, is gone, shed with the mindless, deciduous ease of a single glinting fish scale cast towards the creekbottom by a meandering school." One has to wonder what the author is trying to express when he mentions an undertaker, a school of fish, trees, and light to describe the face of a character.
Finally, even though the time distortion is interesting at the beginning, it quickly falls into a predictable pattern of oscillating between Karel's present and childhood, the transition happening each time after a "cliffhanger." Only in the very end when Karel mixes both present and past within the same train of thought does it get more unpredictable and actually interesting (stylistically and diegetically.)

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel begins with the birth, in 1895, of the main character, Karel Skala, in Lavaca County, Texas – a birth that results in his mother’s death. Karel is the youngest of four brothers whose father, Vaclav, is a hard-scrabble rancher. The family has now been deprived of the nurturing presence of the mother and all the men (the father included) lay the blame on Karel. It is the very absence of important female characters that makes this novel so interesting. The men lie, cheat, steal, use each other and kill each other without the mitigating presence of strong women. All carry vengeance in their hearts. All are reticent to forgive the injuries that others have caused. And Karel feels the pain of this lack of forgiveness throughout his life, most especially from his brothers and his father.

Representing his family, at the tender age of 15, Karel, a prodigious horseman, rides in a stakes race. Win or lose, the results of this race will have serious consequences for all members of the Skala clan and will change the course of their lives. Will Karel ever receive forgiveness for being the cause of the mother’s absence? Will he ever repair his relationships with his family members? The answers to this are wrapped up in another tragic event. And the title gives nothing away as the term “wake” has several applicable meanings.

I’ve read a few reviews where the author was castigated for his style. Personally, I enjoyed his long descriptive sentences, his capture of the Texas vernacular of the early 2oth century, and his poetic phrasings. This is a difficult novel – a challenging tale – but worth the effort. It will propel you to examine your own familial relationships – and perhaps, in the end, to offer some forgiveness.

Grade: A-

[Amy L. Campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Note: This is a review of an Advance Reading Copy, changes may be made to the final version.

There is some good solid writing in this. Lots and lots of good solid writing. In fact, there is so much solid writing that I was overwhelmed by it. There were moments when I was begging for plain, simple sentences and the only time I got it was in dialog. The rest of the time I was beaten over the head with wordy sentences stretching an average of 3 lines. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of flowery language, but this was a little much.

Also, I have no idea what was going on with the Knedlik twins. They seemed completely superfluous to the plot, could have done without that 3 or so chapters. It seemed like no one knew what was going on with those guys, inside or out of the book.

There are some major mommy and daddy issues in the book, I have enough of my own so I wasn't really into seeing anyone else's dragged up for the entire 300 pages, which was only occasionally broken up by a horse race or descriptions of farm chores. Yup. It's about as exciting as Farmville, if you're into that sort of thing. I debated giving this two stars, but I just really wasn't into the content either.

The reviewer is a 2009 graduate of Kent State University's Master of Library and Information Sciences program, an alumna of Antioch College, and the author of the blog A Librarian's Life in Books.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I received an advanced copy of The Wake of Forgiveness through B&N's First Look book club.

I absolutely loved Bruce Machart's The Wake of Forgiveness. It's not a book I would have normally picked up off the shelf or taken home from the store, as at first glance it seems like it would just be a western and they just aren't my thing normally, but I'm so very glad that I got the opportunity to read it. Bruce's writing is wonderfully descriptive and he is fantastic at creating moments that you can picture in your mind with such clarity that it is nearly astounding. I have heard many comparisons of his writing to that of Cormac McCarthy, and I would have to agree.

The story itself is a look through time at the rougher days in Lavaca County, TX, at a family of boys raised by their hardened father (Vaclav Skala and his boys), and also at the adult life of the youngest son, Karel. The book alternates in sections between Karel's childhood and adult life, and you uncover bits and pieces of the story as they relate together as you read. We end up with a fascinating look at family, love, and ultimately, of course, forgiveness. The book is moving and powerful, and I would definitely recommend it.

[David Abrams]

The Wake of Forgiveness, the rich, evocative debut novel by Bruce Machart, doesn’t amble gently into a prolonged introduction of place and characters, but begins bang-on in the middle of a peak scene: a messy, fatal childbirth in the winter of 1895:

The blood had come hard from her, so much of it that, when Vaclav Skala awoke in wet bed linens to find her curled up against him on her side, moaning and glazed with sweat, rosary beads twisted around her clenched fingers, he smiled at the thought that she’d finally broken her water.

But, Machart continues a few sentences later, the birth was not an easy one: “When the baby arrived, their fourth boy, blood slicked and clot flecked, he appeared to have been as much ripped from flesh as born of it.”

Likewise, this novel feels as if it was torn by a bare-handed surgeon from Machart’s fecund imagination. Story and style writhe intertwined in a string of densely-packed sentences, the narrative itself taking on a bloody, clotted life of its own.

Read the rest of my review at The Barnes & Noble Review:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5...

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Wake of Forgiveness” is a complex story of several families living in Lacava County, TX, somewhere around 1900. Through the eyes of the author, we are able to glimpse the hard life endured on the farms, and the struggle to establish business and industry. But more than that, it is the story of a father and his four sons; a story filled with anger, fighting, abuse, and maybe even some love. The two main families are the Skala’s and the Villasenor’s. The main character, Karel Skala, is the youngest of the sons and was born on the day his mother died. How he grows, marries, and deals with life’s situations will keep readers interested and wanting more.
I had a hard time getting into this book because of the graphic violence. But, once I got to the second section, I wanted to know more. Bruce Machart has delivered a book that will be a success! Thank you, Barnes & Noble First Look, for making it possible for me to read the book before it comes out! It was well worth the initial struggle! This is a great book for discussion groups.

[McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My thoughts on this book are a little conflicted. Machart's writing style is beautiful at times, overbearing at others, and occasionally impossible to follow (I wondered if he ever learned about varying the length of his sentences in elementary school). The subjects he is grappling with in The Wake of Forgiveness are gripping (though it took me about 100 pages to really get into the novel), but his method of solving the problems he's created for his vivid characters seems superficial to me (unless this is a comment on how insignificant the supposedly deeply-ingrained grudges humans feel they must bear truly are). I could feel while reading this novel how beautiful and moving it could be, but at times I was too focused on Machart's efforts to make it so to notice the novel itself. I also do not have have that much of an interest in horses and ranches in Texas in the early 1900s, but Machart truly brought the world of this novel to life. I haven't read such strong imagery in years. I will definitely remember this novel and look forward to what Machart might write in the future.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot to like about this book. It's a hard-nosed tale of a boy's youth in early 20th century Texas. Skipping back and forth among three traumatic times of his life -- events at his birth, age fifteen, and age twenty-four, the story illuminates his family and his life. The good part is that the story is gripping, and Mr. Machlen is capable of moving it along quite smartly. The bad news is that there are times when the prose bogs down in a welter of obscure clauses; one suspects Mr. Machlen labored over them and that they are artful and symbolic, but their secrets survive determined rereading. That said, some of his images are striking, and he knows his territory. My other complaint is that several of the major events of the story strain credulity; it would have been more in keeping with the general tenor of the book if the author hadn't pushed them quite so far. But it's a good read, reminiscent in some ways of Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the author notes, this book has “an old, even timeless, biblical kind of feel. These are, after all, kind of Old Testament struggles at work. Sons and mothers. Brothers and brothers. Fathers and sons.” These people are as mean as the land the try to tame. In some ways it was reminiscent of "Under the Unbroken Sky" by Shandi Mitchell. But that book, written by a woman, focused more on the women and children of the struggling immigrants, and was written in a softer focus. Machart’s book has very little soft about it, and for the most part the women are distant stereotypes of either saintly mothers or slatternly young women. The author's LaVaca County, Texas is a hard, hard place, and yet, it sure is a story that grabs you and won’t let you go. If I hadn’t agreed to read it for the Barnes & Noble First Look program, I doubt I would have picked it up. But I’m glad I did read it. It’s not a story I’ll soon forget.

[Jared Della Rocca · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful books I've ever read! Machart has a masterpiece on his hand, vividly painting human emotion atop a Texas-in-the-early-1900s background. You are initially drawn in through the heart-rending loss of a mother, and then flash back and forth through the youngest son's life as he copes with a harsh father, the loss of a relationship with his brothers, and his own hard shell. But as tough as that shell is, you can still peer through the cracks to the heart beating underneath, and outright feel the pain that the main character often has to smother and tuck away.

Only once before have I been drawn to write to an author (John Irving), but before I was halfway through this book, I knew I'd be doing it again. Anyone who can write with this type of emotion deserves a handshake and a hug as thanks for bringing to life these characters and this story.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Machart is a master at taking you out of yourself and making his imagined world more real than your own. I flat out loved this novel. A brutal family saga played out in rural Texas at the turn of the last century, The Wake of Forgiveness delivers on both character development and storyline. But more than anything Machart's writing is mesmerizing. I found myself frequently reading whole paragraphs just to hear the language again in my head. "The owl dips a wing and veers west. She clears the trees and glides over the pastureland toward the far southern fork of the creek, toward her hallowed out oak and three fledglings waiting there with eyes just newly keen enough to know the approach of trouble but helpless in all other faculties to defend themselves against it."

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historic and bucolic prose is evocative but I am skeptical of the depth of the farm boy protagonist's insightful mind. Where did he learn to think like that if working the fields all day and lacking the love and even touch of his father. It can't all be owed to the imagination created by early loss. The descriptions of a women's curving hips narrowing to a slender waist are overdone and overused for every female his eyes have the pleasure of falling upon. The family drama is heartfelt, however, and the plot more page turning than you find in a usual Grapes of Wrath setting.

[Florence Renouard · Rating 4 out of 5]

En 1895, au Texas, Klara Skala meurt en mettant au monde son quatrième fils, Karel. Elle était celle qui tempérait le caractère emporté de son mari Vaclav. A sa mort, les quatre petits garçons se retrouvent seuls avec ce père violent, désormais incapable de donner la moindre affection.
Elevé sans amour comme ses frères, Karel partage tout de même avec son père la passion des chevaux de course. Les courses remportées par Karel permettent à Vaclav d'acquérir de plus en plus de terres. Jusqu'au jour où un homme défie le propriétaire terrien, lui proposant un étrange pari...
Ce roman (le premier de l'auteur) est éblouissant : l'atmosphère est rude mais admirablement restituée par la précision et la beauté de l'écriture, qui laisse la part belle aux descriptions des paysages. Les relations intra familiales sont très bien décrites, et l'on ressent énormément d'empathie pour le petit Karel en manque de tendresse.
Le roman est très bien construit, avec d'habiles retours dans le passé qui éclairent le présent.
Une très très belle découverte, qui me donne très envie de lire d'autres romans de l'auteur !

[Manon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qui aurait pu deviner que j'allais autant aimer ce roman.
J'ai mis du temps à le lire, j'avais besoin de grandes plages de lecture tellement il était difficile de le lâcher.
Je suis entrée dans l'histoire dès le début, et bien que la partie "course de chevaux" ne soit pas ce qui m'a le plus passionné, j'en ai quand même apprécié tous les enjeux.
Ce livre se vit, se respire, s'écoute. On y sent la sueur, le sang, la paille, les animaux, la terre. On entend les oiseaux, les cris, les pleurs et les rires.
Karel est extrêmement touchant, cet homme qui même à l'âge adulte continue de penser à cette mère qu'il n'a jamais connu, à se l'imaginer.
Son lien avec ses frères, si complexe apres cette course. Sa relation avec son père, si dure, si brutale.
Et plus tard, la façon dont il va devenir père a son tour.
C'est très bien écrit et étonnamment moderne. L'intrigue se passe entre 1890 et 1925 environ et c'est très intéressant d'imaginer Karel évoluer au milieu de ces hommes bourrus, qui crachent, qui chiquent, qui crient...
C'est encore une excellente lecture publiée chez @editions_gallmeister et dévorée pour le thème "sud profond" du @challengegallmeister !

[Emilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un très beau roman, qui parle d’amour et de famille, mais qui parle surtout de chevaux.
Il y a une telle tendresse dans la description de chevaux, de leurs muscles, de leur souffle, de leur écuries chaudes et rassurantes, de leur puissance au galop, ceux qui courent, ceux qui travaillent dans les champs, les pouliches nerveuses, les hongres placides…
Leurs robes fumantes sous l’effort et la pluie, l’odeur qui les accompagne et que les cavaliers savent apprécier.

Karel monte à cheval, perd un pari contre la femme qu’il aime… et sa vie bascule. Elle sera mariée à un autre, son cheval lui sera retiré…
Le roman met en résonance trois époques : 1895, l’enfance de Karel ; 1910, l’année de la course funeste et de sa rencontre avec Graciela ; 1924, où Karel élève des chevaux et a fondé sa propre famille. Sans parvenir à surmonter la marque du passé.

Un très beau roman, épique et équestre.

Bechdel non,
Bechdel diversité non plus

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written throughout--I can see the comparisons to Cormac McCarthy--but the plot seems to lose momentum. Though the characters were, for the most part, vividly realized, I couldn't get too invested in their fates. Partly I think it had to do with the jumps back and forth in time. Ninety percent of the book was backstory so I think the flashbacks became a narrative strategy to avoid exposition. The author is great at depicting historical events and his knowledge of horses is obvious. I had some trouble understanding the event at the heart of the book where Villarreal shows up wanting to invest his money in the town and marry off his daughters to the brothers. And he never seems to evolve beyond a cartoonish cigar-smoking villain. Maybe if his motives had been better explained I would've had an easier time with the second half of the book.

[Belinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this gritty western type novel to be absolutely amazing. Every page of every chapter was moving, written witih a deftness mastered by very few, poetically evoking dispair, loyality, and cunning like no other western. The story spools out to unravel the tale of the main characters hurtful past, but those emotions were paralled when the story dug deep into the hurtful past of a hardened man and his formadable life to exposing his heart bit by bit.

This is one worth reading again and again to nudge out all of the little details that make this novel so great. I'm truely blown away by the writing of Bruce Machart, I'll definately be looking up other works by this author while trying to keep my expectations reasonable, as how can another of his novels be just as good or better than this one? Unlikely.