THE RAM OF GOD.

John B. Keane. 1996. Roberts Rhinehart. Hardcover. 283 pages. $22.99.

The Ram of God is Eddie Drannaghy. When Eddie was a young, naive priest in the seminary, he was seduced by an in-law visiting from America. His lazy younger twin brothers caught him and gave him the nickname. He was also drummed from the seminary. Now, years later, he’s running the family farm, while his brothers spend their time getting drunk. But their father gave the farm to the twins, assuming Eddie would be a priest. But the twins do no work, leaving the actual running of the farm to the Ram of God.

Under Eddie’s loving, careful eyes and skilled hands, the Drannaghy farm is one of the best in the small village of Ballybobawn. And that hasn’t escaped the eyes of the owner of the village grocery store, Mollie Cronane, a rapacious, greedy woman who is not above using any means possible to get what she wants. She wants the farm, and to that end, she has ordered her two daughters to get themselves pregnant by Eddie’s brothers. Which they do, willingly. Eddie isn’t worried, though. He’s planning to return to the seminary once his brothers are married.

But life always has plans for you that don’t go with your own. Tragedy strikes the Drannaghy clan twice in short order, throwing a wrench into Mollie’s plans and putting Eddie into a situation he never wanted. Now he is the only one standing between the family farm, which holds many tender memories for him, and Mollie’s plans.

As Keane looks at Eddie’s efforts to preserve the family farm, he also examines many other issues – some of them secondary to the story, others effectively showcasing things that are a blight on the lives of the rural communities of Ireland. Alcoholism runs throughout the story – Eddie’s brothers, the father of a young girl who helps out at farm, and others in the community. Keane shows the devastation alcoholism brings with it, how it can rip a family apart. He also looks at corruption in both the local police and politicians (officials more concerned with their job security and retirement than upholding the law), and to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church. Although what he shows as corruption in the Church seems more to be people who are unwittingly being manipulated rather than bearers of outright corruption and malevolence.

Another issue common in many of his books is not what you would call promiscuity, but more a personal loneliness, in some cases, and in others, a sexual naiveté, that all too often leaves young girls pregnant, alone and confused. (This is one of his personal digs at the Catholic teaching on birth control as a sin. It’s an issue that comes up in other books.)

One secondary issue the book brings up is Ireland’s version of racism – the way Ireland’s travelers are viewed and treated. On the one hand, Keane does show the travelers as outright thieves – one of them using her daughter as a distraction while she steals from a home. But then he shows the response of the overall community as excessively violent, giving him an ambivalent view of the whole thing.

But even in his scolding, Keane is gentle and warmhearted. He is able to see both sides of most issues, even when he doesn’t agree with one of the sides. But he is usually evenhanded. Amid all these moments of heartbreak and frustration, Keane takes time to show peacefulness, and humor.

If there is one thing that frustrates me about this book, it is how much tragedy and evil happens with almost no relenting before all is made right. There are times when it’s outright oppressive.

Keane has a deep love and command of the language. This is evident in how much he’s able to convey without resorting to long, florid sentences and overreaching description. He packs a lot into few words.

Keane died about six years ago, so his books are harder to find. For this one, you’ll have to search used book stores, Amazon.com, Powells.com, and several other websites. But the searching makes this book all the sweeter when you obtain it.

IN MEMORIAM: J.D. SALINGER, ROBERT PARKER AND DICK FRANCIS

Since the last deadline for the Independent, the skeletal gent in the black robes has made three calls in the world of letters.

The most famous – at least the one that got the most press – was J.D. Salinger, author of the seminal coming-of-age-novel Catcher in the Rye. He passed away on January 27, 2010 at the age of 91.

Catcher in the Rye made Salinger’s name in the literary world and turned him into a hermit. He was uncomfortable with all the fame that came his way from the book’s publication and basically shut himself off from the rest of the world. He only published two other books – Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey. His last published piece appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1965, but in a 1980 interview in Esquire he said he wrote regularly – only for himself. (Publishers are anxiously waiting to see if any of that writing is worthwhile and publishable.)

For the last three decades of his life, he refused to do any interviews and holed up in his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. There was one instance where he agreed to do an interview for a local high school newspaper, but once the principal got word of it and issued a press release, Salinger refused to do the interview.

Catcher is one of those novels you either hate or love. Holden Caulfield is a walking contradiction. He claims to be an atheist but is constantly viewing the world through religious eyes. Caulfield wants to rebel against society, and yet when he sees that rebellion knocking on the door, as it were, of his little sister’s life, he wants to protect her from that same rebellion.

What Salinger viewed as rebellion in the 1950s would be considered tame stuff today, but the profanities in the book instantly landed it on lists of banned books and turned it into a book that English teachers at every level feel they have to teach (one reason why it’s a love it or hate it book). It also played a major role in the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon. However you feel about it, Catcher in the Rye has helped to shape the American psyche for the better part of the last 60 years.

Robert Parker left us on January 18, 2010. He died suddenly of a heart attack, writing at his desk at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

Parker, best known for his thriller and detective novels, turned out 65 books in 37 years. In recent years, he had branched into young adult titles and westerns. But he’s best known for the tough, no-nonsense private eye, Spenser. Spenser melded the tough detectives of the noir era – Phillip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Sam Spade – with modern sensibilities. Spenser was a great cook (Parker often received requests for cookbooks based on his Spenser novels), he was a boxer, a weight-lifter, and believed in psychotherapy, which led him to his long-time girlfriend, Dr. Susan Silverman. In every sense of the term, Spenser was a renaissance man: an expert fighter and lover, a well-read and courteous gentleman, and one who, when needed, would gladly shoot or beat the bad guys.

Parker held an M.A. and a Ph.D. in literature from Boston University and taught literature there, as well as at Northeastern University. He believed Raymond Chandler was one of the best writers America produced, and completed the unfinished Chandler manuscript Poodle Springs.

Parker was a prolific writer. Along with his research for novels, he wrote a minimum of five pages a day, a mixture that can be quite daunting. His writing style was crisp and sharp, highly articulate and erudite, almost Spartan, with a smart mix of humor that didn’t overwhelm the story.

Besides Spenser, he also created the characters of Jesse Stone, an alcoholic, ex-baseball player who became the chief of police in the fictional town of Paradise, Mass. There are nine Stone novels, with a new one due out later this spring. He also created Sunny Randall, a female Boston P.I., to give his friend, actress Holly Hunter, a juicy role. No movies were ever made for the Sunny Randall books, but the Jesse Stone books resulted in seven made-for-television movies featuring Tom Selleck.

Parker’s agent says there are two or three other novels in various stages of finishing, so we will get three or four more from him before the end of the year.

The last of the Reaper’s victims is Dick Francis, who passed away on February 14, at age 89.

Francis was a former jockey and set all of his mysteries in the world of horse racing. One didn’t need to understand the sport to enjoy his books, all of which breezed along with the breakneck speed of the horse races that provided the backdrop to his stories. His father was a steeplechase jockey who became a stable keeper, and two of his uncles were also professional jockeys.

During his nine-year riding career, he won 350 races and, among others, rode for England’s Queen Mother. She always got an advance hardcover copy of each book. That’s one of the reasons his books lacked a lot of the sex that is a hallmark of the genre. It’s also the same reason his language was relatively tame.

He turned to writing mystery novels to supplement his meager earnings from journalism. His first novel was Dead Cert, published in 1962, and from that point he published about one book a year, finishing with 42 novels under his belt and 60 million copies in print. His late wife, Mary, helped him with the research and editing (one unauthorized biography claims she actually did all the writing). Dick and Mary would spend seven months a year flying around the world researching the latest book, and then five months in the writing and editing. Francis wrote each sentence longhand and focused on it until he felt it was right, and then he moved onto the next. After Mary died in 2000, he stopped writing for six years (he’d said in interviews that he’d stop when she died), but returned 2006 with Under Orders, his fourth Sid Halley novel. (With so many novels, Francis surprisingly had only three recurring characters: twins Kit and Holly Fielding, who were in two novels, and one-handed ex-jockey-turned-P.I. Sid Halley, who was in four novels, including my personal favorite, Come to Grief.)

While some complained that his books had a formula – injured jockey with a painful past thrown into a dangerous situation (Francis had broken his collarbone six times in his career along with several other major injuries) – he always created fully fleshed characters. One thing many of his critics never considered is one way in which he bucked mystery novel traditions: Since all of his heroes were ex-jockeys, they didn’t live up to the hulking masculine idea of the genre. Most professional jockeys are in the area of 5'6" to 5'9", far below the six-footers you usually find in thrillers and mysteries.

His last three books have been co-written with his son Felix – meaning Dick did the outline, and Felix did the writing. Their fourth collaboration, Crossfire, is due out this spring.

While we may mourn the passing of all these talented men, we can celebrate the things they left with us.

Rich welcomes questions and comments from readers.  You may contact him through this paper, or by email at 62rich@gmail.com.