Give Us This Day

Description

'This is Graham Greene territory; part love story, part thriller - a moving account of a man's battle for his own soul' - The Times Tom Carey is a priest in crisis. God's good world has curdled and the Church is beset by scandal. Increasingly, he is haunted by the face of a woman he once secretly loved. Abandoning his comfortable parish he buries himself in the post of Port Chaplain on a busy river, but soon finds himself caught up in the murky world of international people-smuggling. The alluring but sinister Captain Cargo and his beleaguered Filipino crew seem intent on forcing him into a radical expression of his priesthood, but a chance encounter with the woman he has not seen for thirty years throws his vocation and faith into question.

Jonathan Tulloch was born and bred in Cumbria. He was educated by Augustinian friars. He has written three previous novels, The Season Ticket, winner of the Betty Trask Prize and filmed as Purely Belter, The Bonny Lad and The Lottery. He featured on the TLS list of the twenty most promising young writers, and recently won the J.B. Priestly Award. His work has been translated into five languages. He is a regular contributor to The Tablet, the leading international Roman Catholic weekly.

Tulloch masterfully fashions a foreboding gothic landscape out of this godforsaken colony of the damned... An immensely resonant and powerful story -- Laurence Phelan * Independent on Sunday * Jonathan Tulloch confirms his promise with Give Us This Day, a beautifully nuanced study of a Teesside chaplain * Daily Express * The blighted northern English landscape is rendered lovingly... A skillfully paced, readable novel * Times Literary Supplement * Half-tragic, half-hopeful, always unsentimental, Give Us This Day is a wholly absorbing novel -- D.J. Taylor * Guardian * A beautifully written and compelling story of the search for truth and integrity -- Bernard O'Donoghue