Into the Fire

The second novel for this week’s CFBA tour is Davis Bunn’s All Through the Night. I’ve read a few of the prolific author’s novels, and one thing that can be said for all of them is they’re entertaining. Having been an author of bestsellers, the recipient of Christy Awards, and books which have sold in excess of six million copies in multiple languages, the guy’s simply a professional novelist, not to mention he is currently serving as the writer-in-residence at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University.

Now one might assume with those credentials Mr. Bunn could be a writer of primarily what we’ve learned to call “literary” prose—what some action seeking readers deem pompous or stilted. The exact opposite is true. His protagonists are all male, flawed and vulnerable, who tend to make up for their sensitivity in a bit of bravado and rely upon a silent, often incommunicado strength. The plots usually take several twists with unreliable characters popping up to confuse the reader and other colorful unique individuals dotting the landscape and subplots of the story while providing all kinds of information and depth to a basic storyline of intelligent, suspenseful, and interesting mysteries.

The unusual source(s) of alienation in his protagonists leads the characters to make sacrificial decisions, and skillfully and intricately woven into these decisions is the choice every man must make for himself as to who and what he will believe in and turn to in the inevitable times of crisis.

All Through the Night gives us 31 year old ex-special ops Wayne Gruzsa (“It’s pronounced ‘Grusha’.”), who is also an army trained accountant, hired by a poor retirement community to recover the life savings of its residents commandeered by a scam artist. Introduced to the opportunity by his pastor sister who has reclaimed him from the hiding out portion of his life after love and war and divorce, he is a man who struggles with nightmares and stealth night addictions to extreme visits just to spy on his ex-wife and her husband and little boy. While you feel his urge to destroy the man who now possesses his former love, you also sense he could never do it because of his innate sense of his own fault in the marriage’s demise.

What can I say? This is a skillfully told tale, entertaining in content and structure, filled with some impossible events which made me want to cheer, all the while exposing the searing pain in the hero and some of those around him but bringing the gradual and necessary healings to those in need of redemption. The ending did not conclude with the resolution of the climactic circumstances, instead gradually satisfying some emotional remnants which allowed the story a graceful finale.

Very, very entertaining story.

Father, you’ve given Davis Bunn a multitude of stories and the skills to tell them well. I pray you would continue to inspire many, many more and bless his every effort to bring you honor in fulfilling what you have for him to do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.