{"id":679,"date":"2008-06-07T10:20:40","date_gmt":"2008-06-07T10:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html"},"modified":"2008-06-07T10:20:40","modified_gmt":"2008-06-07T10:20:40","slug":"a-peace-that-surpasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html","title":{"rendered":"A peace that surpasses"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other night, I read Richard Bausch’s new novel, Peace.<\/em> <\/a>
\n(Don’t be impressed. It’s a short novel, and difficult to put down once you begin.)
\nIt is intense and brutal. Set in the winter of 1944, some American soldiers in Italy have been sent on a reconaissance mission. The men are led by an elderly Italian man who speaks a bit of English, claiming to have been in the US for a time when he was younger.
\nThe three soldiers are bound, not only in their present mission and attendant suffering, but also by what they had witnessed shortly before: a crime committed by their sergeant.
\nAn increasingly treacherous journey up a terrible mountain. Being led into the unknown by a stranger they really do not trust, not really liking each other much, a usually unspoken tension regarding the sergeant’s crime, fear of attack – which comes in the form of a sniper, a suspicion of pointlessness about the mission on which they have been sent shaken both by a sudden awareness of the horrors being inflicted on the innocent within their hearing, but a sense of helplessness about what they, themselves can do, and always, always, a yearning for home.
\nPeace.
\nSorrowful, even in the hope it digs up (for that is the sense of this book, even if it is about climbing – it digs and digs. Burrows. Not a cheery end of rainbows assuring us that all will be well once the driving rain stops and the rainbows appear. But neither is it nihilistic, at all. Yes, Bausch says, peace, but here on earth, it is a peace that can neither forget what came before or pretend that what awaits around the next bend even cares.
\nAlthough the book is relatively short, Bausch’s gifts are such that the characters emerge fully, not as caricatures, but as complex human beings, tied up in knots as they forge on, propelled by a combination of self-preservation, duty and compassion. The novel is about war, certainly, but it is also about the bigger war called your life and mine and the violent bearing it away.
\nHighly recommended – and if your parish reading group can handle the language – recommended for that, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, I read Richard Bausch’s new novel, Peace. (Don’t be impressed. It’s a short novel, and difficult to put down once you begin.) It is intense and brutal. Set in the winter of 1944, some American soldiers in Italy have been sent on a reconaissance mission. The men are led by an elderly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA peace that surpasses - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A peace that surpasses - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The other night, I read Richard Bausch’s new novel, Peace. (Don’t be impressed. It’s a short novel, and difficult to put down once you begin.) It is intense and brutal. Set in the winter of 1944, some American soldiers in Italy have been sent on a reconaissance mission. The men are led by an elderly…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-07T10:20:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A peace that surpasses - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A peace that surpasses - Via Media","og_description":"The other night, I read Richard Bausch’s new novel, Peace. (Don’t be impressed. It’s a short novel, and difficult to put down once you begin.) It is intense and brutal. Set in the winter of 1944, some American soldiers in Italy have been sent on a reconaissance mission. The men are led by an elderly…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-06-07T10:20:40+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html","name":"A peace that surpasses - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-06-07T10:20:40+00:00","dateModified":"2008-06-07T10:20:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/a-peace-that-surpasses.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A peace that surpasses"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}