After Reading: AUTUMN IN CARTHAGE by Christopher Zenos

By: Meradeth Houston on 3:00 AM

A quick reminder that if you want to enter the giveaway I have running, today's the last day! I'll be picking a winner tonight. Details here! :)

The nether side of passion is madness.

Nathan Price is a college professor with crippling impairments, seeking escape from his prison of necessity. One day, in a package of seventeenth-century documents from Salem Village, he stumbles across a letter by his best friend, Jamie, who had disappeared six months before. The document is dated 1692—the height of the Witch Trials. The only potential lead: a single mention of Carthage, a tiny town in the Wisconsin northern highland. 

The mystery catapults Nathan from Chicago to the Wisconsin wilderness. There, he meets Alanna, heir to an astonishing Mittel-European legacy of power and sacrifice. In her, and in the gentle townsfolk of Carthage, Nathan finds the refuge for which he has long yearned. But Simon, the town elder, is driven by demons of his own, and may well be entangled in Jamie’s disappearance and that of several Carthaginians. As darkness stretches toward Alanna, Nathan may have no choice but to risk it all… 
Moving from the grimness of Chicago’s South Side to the Wisconsin hinterlands to seventeenth-century Salem, this is a story of love, of sacrifice, of terrible passions—and of two wounded souls quietly reaching for the deep peace of sanctuary. (Goodreads)

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this novel in exchange for a review (and LibraryThing for facilitating!)

I think the best way to describe this novel is Outlander meets Discovery of Witches. Considering how much I adored both of those novels, this instantly went on my to-be-re-read shelf because I honestly loved it. The opening, with such a frank description of academia (which rang incredibly true to life), drew me in, and then Carthage was such an interesting place that I could hardly put the book down. The main character, Nathan, wrestles with demons I have seen quite a bit of in those that I work with. Academia attracts several types of people, and to be honest, one of those types often struggles against depression (or several related troubles that are often, inappropriately I know, grouped together). In the characters growth and experiences, I found myself rooting for him, and completely wishing I could move to Carthage (except for the winters--give me somewhere warm!). A little interesting twist on the inhabitants, and well, I was all in. I don't want to give away too much, because that's part of the allure of the novel, but this was an amazing book that I highly recommend. I'll be re-reading it this autumn for sure.