What sets her off is David’s surprising first post-divorce romance, with an up-and-coming singer with a breakout radio hit and a soft spot for soulful David and his “‘man muscles,’ built up from hard work.” Crawford dramatizes that burgeoning romance with warmth and wit, and scenes between David and Riley, the singer, pulse with longing and the pleasures of an unexpected connection. Also strong are moments showcasing David’s efforts to balance work and parenting, a portrait of a man doing his best even when overwhelmed. David’s eventual handling of son Nick’s refusal to get out of bed in the morning evinces a charming shrewdness.
But as David Nobile’s name suggests, he’s too good for this world, and so he’s smeared by Kim Lecture, whose own improbable name suggests, accurately, that she’s a caricature, powering the plot out of pique but rarely coming across as convincingly human. Even hockey coach Hank turns on David once Kim makes her outrageous accusations, but David has true support from Riley, who believes him—she notes that lies like Kim’s “just makes the next legitimate case that much harder to prosecute.” A tragedy late in the book reveals new layers in Kim and stands, besides David’s first encounter with Riley, as the strongest, most engaging passages of this lengthy novel.
Takeaway: Clean romance and unjust accusations power this unexpected love story.
Comparable Titles: Ken Jones’s Guilty Until Proven Innocent, Karen Robards’s One Summer.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
South Carolina author James Crawford is a writer of many hats, and each one fits his imaginative head as though custom made. In addition to his career as a novelist he is also a US Navy veteran, and engineer, an amateur astronomer, a military historian and a devotee of space travel technology. He has written successful books about the future of man and space and other planets as well as books of compelling spiritual insights. But in addition to his diffusely rich potpourri of resources he is also able to write about human frailty, human tragedy, and human strength as influenced by spiritual convictions. A NOBLE PARADISE does not parade all of his past successful books before the reader: this book came about because of a need to share a personal experience of a single dad and the meaning of fatherly love in the face of staggering threats to stability. Is it a memoir? Perhaps, but first and foremost this book is a watershed about survival of good over evil, love of children over false accusations, and of the true meaning of parenting. References to the classics enhance the story: ``Good sacrifices of it self for the betterment of other. Evil sacrifices form other for the betterment of itself'
David Nobile is a young man who married young whose wife Kim after the birth of their second child regrets her leaving college and returns to school for a business degree, leaving David to care for their two children on the salary of a mechanic in a paper mill, giving up his dream of returning to school to study astronomy. When the story opens David is 33 years old and divorced after 11 ½ years of marriage from his wife Kim who is living a carefree life with a best female friend Nancy. David won custody of Nick age 12 and Breanna age 9, and Kim pays child support. David is a devoted father whose children adore him and are very happy to be living with their father - with occasional visitation to their mother. The children are proficient in roller hockey: Nick dreams of progressing to hockey school with Gauthier and Breanna plans to attend art school. David's joy is his caring for his children along with a passion for classical music, all music, literature, philosophy, and an infatuation with a current popular singer, the beautiful Riley Kragen (who has recovered from a drug abuse problem). David's work buddies encourage his attraction to Riley, and David eventually attends a concert where Riley is singing, leaves flowers and a note of praise and an invitation to dinner in his home to meet his children. Their relationship grows slowly and refreshingly wholesome and bilaterally supportive.
Kim's spending habits begin to reduce the child support payments and her friend Nancy suggests Kim gain custody of the children to avoid the child support burden. Both women see Riley as a cheap woman who is a bad influence on the young children. The manner in which the custody change is planned is to accuse David of not only being an inadequate parent dating a tawdry woman of the stage, but also to feed the legal fires with false accusations of child abuse and even sexual molestation of the children. Kim, Nancy, and their crooked lawyer friend Lillian build a case, coercing Breanna to make statements of unwanted touching from David, and very suddenly the women appear at David's home with police and a DSS worker to serve summons removing Nick and Breanna (very much against their will) to live with Kim and refusing David even visitation rights. David is enraged, his `friends' refuse to support a man accused of child molestation, and his only support is from Riley who has grown close to David and is an emotional support. Eventually Kim's poor mothering results in Nick's escaping her house and in the process being seriously wounded in an auto vs. bicycle accident which leaves Nick with multiple injuries including a serious head injury requiring multiple surgeries and confinement to the ICU. This climax brings all parties together - who is to blame for this possible loss of Nick? And it is in this high stress level that honest parental love and resolution brings about changes in everyone as all wait breathlessly to see if Nick will survive.
Crawford sculpts this story with profound sensitivity. He addresses divorce, dreams, the cruelties of legal entanglements, emotional needs, finding honest love, spiritual guidance, the delicate issues of end of life planning and the need for support of a comatose patient, the atmosphere in a hospital and the interaction of family at the peak of crisis, resolution, and the power of parental love. The manner in which he ends this story is compelling. This is a very well written book that invites us all to investigate many of our own positions about social and family and spiritual problems. It also happens to be a very fine novel! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 14
A genuine family drama that might inspire and encourage other single parents.
A false allegation and a critically injured child destroy a single dad’s picture-perfect family in this novel by Crawford (Mariner Valley, 2012, etc.).
Blue-collar millwright David Nobile (not “Noble,” despite the title) has custody of his two children, Breanna, 9, and Nick, 12. Money is tight, but they’re happy, despite occasional disruptions by Nobile’s self-absorbed, scheming ex, Kim Lecture. The Nobile paradise grows more heavenly after he befriends and starts to fall in love with an up-and-coming musician named Riley Kragen. But after all this happiness is established, conflict kicks in: Lecture, who’s jealous and disapproving of Nobile’s romance with Kragen, plants a false story that he sexually abused his daughter. This sets off family turmoil that culminates in the hospitalization of the children, possibly never to recover. The book succeeds through Crawford’s talent at characterization, dialogue and scene-setting. Nobile is a likable, relatable protagonist, but like his extremely well-behaved children, he seems a bit too perfect: a Joe Sixpack who likes opera, teaches his daughter calligraphy, and has a bookshelf featuring works on “astronomy, history, oceanography, art history, aviation, archeology, architecture and musical history and theory.” Even the questionably named Lecture, for all her pettiness and general awfulness, occasionally draws sympathy, or at least empathy. Finally, and vitally for a book like this, Crawford consistently and plausibly depicts mundane moments, such as a paper-mill workday (“Sweat ran down from under the headband of his hard hat and he blinked tightly every so often to keep it clear of his eyes”) or the logistics and judgments of divorced parenting, without ever losing the reader. The story, which seems to have been inspired by real-life experiences, is never tedious or self-indulgent and may ring true for many readers.
A genuine family drama that might inspire and encourage other single parents.
The Heart of a Family Fragmented by Divorce
The curtains part and the scene opens in a hospital waiting room, where an anxious man's anticipation of a positive verdict is stifled by the appearance of a clergyman. The picture on the wall is one of happy children: a stark contrast to the reality hinted at which surrounds his own. And the clergyman's expression - one of compassion and pity - shouts out the news as surely as if they had announced it over the hospital PA system.
All this is deftly achieved through innuendo, expressions, and description of background: devices that James Crawford employs with a practiced hand (powerful ones that too few authors seem to know how to properly wield.)
The next chapter fills in many blanks, returning to a happier period in David's life when his family was together and a sports game and work life envelopes them all in a blanket of comfort and routine. It's happiness with a difference, for although the parents work together, they are divorced, and David is a single parent.
When Kim trumps up charges to get the kids, David finds himself facing not only a selfish ex, but a dangerous game indeed: one that holds the potential of, once again, destroying the family he's only just put back together after the divorce.
It's the kids who ultimately suffer in any conflict between parents: this is explicitly portrayed in a series of encounters that places them directly in the middle of an evolving court case that seems to have no end and no handy resolution.
A Noble Paradise is at its strongest when detailing all the dynamics of the family's interactions, from an ex's perspective and motivations for lying to broken children and broken lives.
More so than most novels about single parents, divorce, or children stuck in the middle, it offers poignant perspectives from different sides while retaining its ultimate focus on the kids. Add a disaster and the unusual possibility of recovery from an unexpected direction and you have a timeless story made fresh and new by a series of expertly-woven interplays between characters, all cemented by a father with selfless devotion to a family fragmented by divorce and contention.
A Noble Paradise by James Crawford
Genre: Adult, Realistic Fiction
Source: I received a copy to facilitate my review. the opinions expressed here are my own.
This book hooks you from the beginning. So let me give you a warning. if you are looking for a feel good book; put this one down and find something else to read.
We have David Noble a single father raising two kids. This book touches many ares in my own past. Like David so many single parents try not to involve their children in the ugly parts of a divorce. He tries to provide support and balance to his children's lives. David's ex-wife, tired of paying child support and wanting her daughter listens to friends who tell her how she can get the kids back and destroy David. It is a shame that this happens not only in books but in real life. They use the past of David's girlfriend as part of the ammunition. David has to battle not only his ex-wife but the accusations that so many of his friends are willing to believe. Anytime lies are told and children are caught in the middle, you know that things are going to go terribly wrong. Will the tragedy that David must face bring about a change and possible healing?
For me the indicator of a good book is how well it ramps up my emotions. This book put them over the top. I was furious with Kim, David's ex-wife and all of her friends. I was sad for David and all that he had to go through because of lies. Mostly I was angry that these children were caught in the middle of something that was not their fault. This is a must read book and one a recommend.
