Our Promised Land: A Novel

Our Promised Land: A Novel
By Michael T Darkow
Publisher: Synergy Books
Published: February, 2010
Pages: 162
ISBN: 978-0-9840760-1-7

One father. Two brothers. Two great religions. One mutually hallowed patch of ground. For centuries both have called it home. Now they bitterly contest whose nation it shall be.

Part history, part fiction, Our Promised Land challenges the reader to walk this long sad journey in the shoes of both sides. The characters are gut wrenchingly real, the events too tragic to bear, precisely because they are as historical as they are fictional. Can there ever be peace by any other path, except to admit the humanity of both sides, each finally granting the other this appropriate and proper dignity?

Our Promised Land compels the reader to face the unspeakable monstrousness of the violence, its very human perpetrators on both sides. Yet it refuses to deny the humanity of either.

Our Promised Land begs for that far better world we of every race, every nation, every religion, and every ideology hope, dream, and yearn, the one that finally and at long and terrible last is expressive of our intelligence, our dignity, and our nobility, no longer our worst instincts.

Can it ever be “the” Promised Land for either side, except that intelligence, dignity, and nobility confess, it cannot be only one side’s, what has always been both sides’, Our Promised Land?

About The Author

Author, Michael T Darkow, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 6, 1951. At the age of six, his family moved to Menomonee Falls where he enjoyed the quintessential suburban childhood of a baby boomer. There he gained his very American sensibilities. From 1968 to 1972, Mr. Darkow attended the University of Wisconsin. He studied creative writing, theater, and philosophy.

He indulged himself in the rich culture university environments so generously offered during those very memorable years. The course of his life since has been guided by the emotional idealism born out of his childhood, struggling with the pragmatic realism adulthood inevitably imposes.

From the author:

I do not accept the highest purpose of art is to entertain, but am fully aware that art which does not entertain is silly and self indulgent.

Neither do I see art as an end unto itself. Rather, I consider it to be a dialog through which to explore and evolve our human selves. I am fully dedicated to our human evolution.

My perspective is informed by science. It, however, is animated by emotion. I have sought the much awaited wedding of the two. I am not ashamed to admit my writing has this conscious thematic core.

My thematic core best could be described as the conciliation of instinctive idealism with scientific logical objectivity. In my work, the Age of Reason confronts the passionate idealism of blind faith belief, not to deny it, but to propose to it the real mechanism which shall enable its actual accomplishment.

My body of work takes the dramatic admonition, “let us embrace Good and do no more Evil,” with literal objectivity. It is with pragmatic objectivity, I embrace and then reiterate the proposal, let us make of our human society Heaven, our beloved earth Paradise.

Can we any longer be deceived by our prescience irrationalities, even if well intended, how this shall be accomplished in actual reality? Our astounding material technological progress proves how limitless our human capability is. What has seemed, unrealistic and impossible, except a divine entity would intervene and cause it to be, I now reason a literal and objective basis, both in concept and mechanism. I reason, it is fully within our human capability to accomplish this. By our inventive intelligence, the integrity of our own human deeds, there is no limit to what we human beings can accomplish. It is entirely within our human capability to make of our human society Heaven, our earth Paradise, by embracing Good and doing no more Evil.

It is this thematic core that underlies my body of work. I invite the reader to join me in this bold exploration, this unafraid dialog, to quest for precisely this evolution.

Visit the author’s website at: http://www.michaeltdarkow.com

Recent Review:

“This story hits hard. It rings of so much truth you have to remind yourself that it’s a work of fiction. It hits so hard that you realize we, as humans, may have be able to love without hatred interfering in our hearts. Simply put, Darkow has managed to bring a piece of the world that so many of us thought we understood or knew and put us into the reality that we haven’t a clue what our own hearts can do or become. The best part? Perhaps in the end some of us can become what we are meant to be, “human”, instead of what we have become. Perhaps there is a hope, even for a part of the world that seems to have always functioned with hatred surrounding it.”
Reviewed on 06/07/2010 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Beverly Pechin

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