This provides occasion for some lurid mortuary scenes, and it also dooms Hansen's wife and child, whom he might have saved. Outside town is a reclusive religious commune for fallen women, led by an enigmatic evangelist called Chase. Sheriff Hansen sees Chase as a sinister figure, but O'Nan clearly intends his faith as a contrast to Hansen's. This neglected piece is the great missed opportunity of A Prayer for the Dying , and O'Connor or Gardner would have been all over it. O'Nan is much more interested in what Hansen does with his wife's body behind closed doors, and in dredging up Hansen's grisly war story in a pseudo-psychological twist.
Narrative voice is part of the problem.
He loses the broad vision which an external viewpoint might have allowed, while denying himself the insights of informed introspection. A Prayer for the Dying is striking for its lack of originality. But it just might be that other peoples' writing about his work is making him nervous, too. Tucson Weekly . Info Booth .