A Book of American Martyrs: A Novel

"A Book of American Martyrs is tragic, wicked, sly, hopeful, and truly and insanely great."

At first impression, A Book of American Martyrs is intimidating weighing in at more than 700 pages. But the story quickly pulls you in and keeps you reading.

It begins with the murder of an abortion doctor. Fairly quickly readers find that the plot is a framework for serious reflection on the many paradoxes in American society. The plot also serves as a framework for exploring character—not “character,” as in “this book has interesting characters . . .” but character as in what makes a person moral?

With a book of so much genius—on the same level and scope, for example as with Melville’s Moby-Dick, the problem for this reviewer is how much to reveal. It is probably safe to give a broad outline of who, what, where when, and why.

The two principal characters are from opposite sides of the conservative/liberal tracks. Luther Dunphy is a roofer (referred to as a carpenter, as Jesus was a carpenter—though this is never said outright) poor and very religious and Augustus (Gus) Vorhees, a medical doctor (who as part of providing women’s services also performs abortions).

In the first chapter and with little introduction, Luther abruptly murders Gus outside a women’s clinic (and also murders Gus’ protective escort—something that colors Luther’s righteousness). Oates constructs A Book of American Martyrs as historical fiction and sets the murder in 1999. To validate the premise, Oates identifies true-to-life abortion doctor killers of that era. (Is murdering of abortion doctors in America still a thing today?)

Readers will learn much about Gus’ and Luther’s past but not all; their social and psychological makeup are presented as fragments in time. Luther exhibited severe emotional difficulties with violent tendencies in his youth, and also perhaps (it is made clear by not being made clear) a disassociation disorder. Gus is only made known mostly through the eyes of others. Oates conveys this using shifting and alternating points of view, so readers can’t be too sure about anything; some of the narrators appear to be unreliable.

In backstory leading up to the murder, Luther is radicalized through membership in his Evangelical churches connections to more radical churches. He comes to believe that the murder of abortion doctors is mercy. To help future mercy killings of doctors, the radical church publishes a hit list of doctors that deserve to die; doctors advancing up the list when doctors at the top are killed. (Was this a real thing?)

Luther, after the murder, and after the trial(s), sits on death row and becomes more centered, as it is said when a man knows he is about to die, it concentrates the mind, though he continues to refuse to believe he killed Gus’ escort, as if that murder was done by someone else.

In contrast, in exploring Gus’ life, Gus becomes less understood, less knowable. Gus keeps secrets, and Oates only shares rumors. Despite all readers learn, both Luther and Gus remain cyphers.

Through all of this Oates examines and deconstructs several hypocrisies of American society. One example is capital punishment, that is, state sponsored murder. Society’s acknowledgment of this hypocrisy results in having the chemical companies that make poisons and anesthetics block prisons’ access to their “humane” execution drugs. That, along with doctors who boycott performing executions, results in executions carried out by untrained staff using inadequate anesthetics and poisons, i.e. “botched” executions. Today, botched executions appear to be part of the “new normal.”

Gus and Luther are not the sole focus of A Book of American Martyrs. With Gus dead and Luther in jail, soon to be dead, there are Luther’s and Gus’ families. Oates explores families who are deeply, deeply in distress; she takes Tolstoy’s dictum to heart: each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Chapters are mostly short, allowing room for reflection. Thankfully, the tragic chapters are kept short for they are painful to read, and for this reviewer, there are too many chapters of two families in grief. However, when Oates depicts misery she has a tendency to pile on (this trait carries across many of her books), and when piled on the mood she creates crosses from pathos into bathos.

A Book of American Martyrs is a wonder to read, and as Oates is “a writer’s writer” this book is also fascinating to follow in structure and construction. She uses the technique of changing to Italic font to signal interior monologue and soliloquy (as does Don DeLillo in Zero K). She adds subtle touches to her characters’ soliloquys such as going right up to the edge of insanity, then over the edge into insanity, then pulling back to sanity. The interior roller coaster gives readers pause, and a reason to reread with the feeling of “Did I read what I just thought I read?”

At about midway into A Book of American Martyrs, September 11, 2001 occurs. The intent conveyed to the reader, as well as to the grieving characters is, what is the significance of two deaths compared to the deaths of thousands? And with this, the tone of A Book of American Martyrs changes. With the passage of time from 1999 to 2001, and the stages of grief, depression gives way towards acceptance.

Gus’ daughter meets her grandmother in New York City to learn more about her father’s past, and finds herself enjoying the city’s wonders, and meeting the city’s idiosyncratic, intellectual elite. Here Oates gives a shout out to several real-life NYC residents. Real-life friends, perhaps?

And in a parallel thread, Luther’s daughter trains to become a boxer. That’s right, a boxer. This reviewer is going to end here, not offer any more on the what, how, or why of all of it.

“It was life always that would prevail. That was the singular lesson beside which all others diminished.”

A Book of American Martyrs is tragic, wicked, sly, hopeful, and truly and insanely great.

Note: For those who are not familiar with Greek myth, Arachnae was a weaver who challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest. For Arachnae’s hubris Athena turned Arachnae into a spider. The moral? If you find an error in a beautiful tapestry, that error was meant to be; a mistake purposefully placed so as to not threaten the gods.