This book is great. Charles Carrin doesn't just know about the Holy Spirit, he knows Him. After you read this book you will want to get to know Him too. If you are wanting more of a hunger for God or already have it, get this book it's great.

I found this book quite by accident and finished it with a powerful mixture of hope and sadness.

The book is a multi-layered account of a vanished people but also works as a detective story, as a documentary of modern Poland (the writing is so authentic I felt he must be a local) and as a history novel too. The day to day gritty realism of a country obsessed with its past and refusing to move forward is quite compelling; the soup, the run down villages, the opportunistic city criminals, the old remnants of Communism, the crowded buses and most importantly, the secrets of the forest and the memories they hold. The 'blurb' in my copy refers to the Schama text 'Landscape and Memory' and there are connections as this novel explores the heart of darkness at the centre of this ancient place in modern Europe. Importantly, for me anyway, the novel becomes a powerful postive evocation of the past and a glimmer of hope for a better future.

Highly recommended!

I picked up this book at the library several years ago (having read nor heard anything about it) and immediately found myself absolutely captivated, entranced, spell-bound by the author's riviting story of a post-WWII Polish village and the shameful secrets shared by its inhabitants. I didn't put it down until I finished it - then returned it to the library and couldn't remember the title! (One of he drawbacks of advancing age) I was beside myself - and no one could help - until just this past month when a total stranger and I were discussing favorite reads, and he popped out with the title of this stunning work. I cannot express what an impact this book has had upon me, and I was devastated to learn that the author (and this was his only novel) had died. What a loss. Evocative descriptions of the Polish countryside, memorable characters, old-world values coming up against the modern age, evil and redemption, and an engrosing story line - this book has it all. I know that I will never forget the title again! - and I am making it part of my permanent fiction collection. Charles T. Powers had a true gift, and we readers are the less for his loss.

The story of a young man coming of age, discovering love and lies, ambition and murder in a town that cannot admit its past or face its present. Set in Poland as communism collapses, the rupture of old foundations reveal the townspeople to be what they would forget.While one of the book's larger themes is what the Nazis, and by complicity, the Polish people, did to the Jewish population during the Second World War, it is not "a Holocaust book." Rather it is an absorbing murder and love story; a murder that begins the novel and whose investigation provides its framework, a love story that will leave the reader in tears, reminded what the world should be but is not. It is a rare book, one that impells its reader onward with a gripping narrative but repeatedly brings the reader to a halt to reflect on the beauty and lyricism of its prose.