Scarborough writer creates vivid novel ‘Night Crossing’ explores woman’s life journey through Maine and Ireland

NIGHT CROSSING by Don J. Snyder, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2001, 277 pages, $24.

Don Snyder is adept at picturing scenes for us in his novels and equally deft in characterization.

These two elements carry through “Night Crossing,” the latest novel from the Scarborough author. This is a slow-moving, introspective novel that is both a romance and a suspense novel built around the current “troubles” in Northern Ireland.

The book opens in 1998 with a clandestine meeting of senior intelligence officers who have decided there is only one way to get peace in Ireland – to take an unspeakable action that will “make the people hate the IRA and demand that they lay down their arms.”

Then we meet Nora Andrews, an American mother and housewife, and the story is told through her eyes. Without her husband knowing, Nora buys two tickets to Ireland and then drives up to their Maine hideaway to surprise him with them. Instead, she is surprised to find her husband cheating with a comely young “cheerleader,” as Nora thinks of her.

Nora, in a muddle, flees, going first to her home outside of Boston and then to Cape Cod. There is a long, introspective series of small events that occur during this period that evoke for Nora memories or questions about her life.

She recalls her mother’s philosophy that “when bad things come along, you take them in stride, manage them, and get on with your life.” But Nora cannot do this. She is completely at sea, rudderless. Finally, she decides to use her ticket to Ireland, but then she has another set of decisions to make. Nora is pregnant and her husband does not want the “late in life” child, but she does.

At the airport, she buys a notebook and begins to keep a journal. In her first night in Ireland, she writes: “I returned to Ireland because I believed that once I was there I would know the right thing to do. The right thing for me. Not for anyone else.”

After some introspection, but still not sure, she drags herself to Northern Ireland to an abortionist. While she is there, a bomb goes off in front of the clinic with high costs in life.

Nora decides that she will not have the abortion and makes arrangements to return to America. Then, a priest knocks on her hotel room door and carries in a comatose injured soldier who is being hunted for the bombing. Nora had seen him, so she is implicated, too.

The priest tells her: “This isn’t about you. That man is being hunted by people who will kill him for what he did in the street today. For what you saw him do. ”

The priest explains that “someone had changed the bomb warning and sent people straight to their death.” He tells Nora that a renegade intelligence unit set off the bomb “to create an atrocity so terrible that the Irish people would demand that the IRA decommission their weapons. If they’re right, if it works, then the war is over.”

In saving the life of a mother and child, however, the soldier revealed that he knew of the barbarous plan. He now had to run for his life.

Nora too is marked for death for what she saw. She agrees to help hide the soldier – James Blackburn, a captain in the British Army – until he is better.

Blackburn tells her he wants to go back to Omagh to see about the woman he saved. Nora announces that she will go with him.

The tangled trip goes on. A mysterious white-haired man tries to convince her that Blackburn is going to kill her. She sees a car – with the priest and Blackburn apparently within – explode in a ball of fire.

Nora will return to America. But not before several surprises.

What makes this book so interesting? Certainly, it has an intricate plot, intriguing main characters and detailed description. We learn every nuance in Nora’s character. It depicts life in Northern Ireland today, the horrors of terrorist tactics and their effect on the people there. It’s a romance with plenty of suspense. But it does seem to drag out the escape trek.

It is not easy to read, but a thoughtful one with plenty of questions raised – and discussed – about the internecine warfare on the island that is Ireland, and about people coping in difficult times.