Redemption - Leon Uris [341]
It is not that she and her staff can restore them to full physical or mental health, but she can do enough so that when they leave, they can carry on a useful and independent life. Three of her lads are excellent hands on the ranch. For our little country of a million people, our losses were terrible…just terrible.
Hey! Hey! Hey! By God, there’s sunshine for you! Not from that lazy saint up in the sky but sunshine coming up the hill on horseback through the mist.
Rory and Georgia. They are so hot for each other I swear that one of these days they’re going to get into bed and fry each other to crisps.
And would you ever look at little Rory sitting in the front of her daddy’s saddle and Georgia riding with their son…my grandson. He’s a real thumper, that boy. Do you know what they named him? They named him Liam, after me.
Can you ever imagine something like that?
Here is an excerpt from
A GOD IN RUINS
by
Leon Uris
From HarperCollins Publishers
1
Troublesome Mesa, Colorado
Autumn 2008
A Catholic orphan of sixty years is not apt to forget the day he first learned that he was born Jewish. It would not have been that bombastic an event, except that I am running for the presidency of the United States. The 2008 election is less than a week away.
Earlier in the day, my in-close staff looked at one another around the conference table. We digested the numbers. Not only were we going to win, there was no way we were going to lose. Thank God, none of the staff prematurely uttered uttered the words “Mr. President.”
This morning was ten thousand years ago.
I’m Quinn Patrick O’Connell, governor of Colorado and the Democratic candidate for president. The voters know I was adopted through the Catholic bureaucracy by the ranchers Dan and Siobhan O’Connell.
My dad and I were Irish enough, at each other’s throats. Thanks to my mom, we all had peace and a large measure of love before he was set down in his grave.
All things being equal, it appeared that I would be the second Roman Catholic president in American history. Unknown to me until earlier this day, I would be the first Jewish president as well.
Nothing compares to the constant melancholy thirst of the orphan to find his birth parents. It is the apparatus that forms us and rules us.
Aye, there was always someone out there, a faceless king and queen in a chilled haze, taunting.
Ben Horowitz, my half brother, had been searching for me, haunted, for over a half century. Today he found me.
Tomorrow at one o’clock Rocky Mountain time I must share my fate with the American people. You haven’t heard of Rocky time? Some of the networks haven’t, either. Lot of space but small market.
The second half of the last century held the years that the Jews became one of the prime forces in American life. Politically, there had been a mess of Jewish congressmen, senators, mayors, and governors of enormous popularity and power. None had won the big enchilada. I suppose the buck stops here.
Had I have been elected governor as Alexander Horowitz, I’d have been just as good for my state. However, the discovery of my birth parents a week before the presidential election could well set off a series of tragic events from the darkness where those who will hate me lay in wait.
How do I bring this to you, folks? In the last few hours I have written, “my fellow Americans” twenty-six times, “a funny thing happened to me on the way to Washington” twenty-one times, and “the American people have the right to know” three dozen times. My wastebasket overfloweth.
Don’t cry, little Susie, there will be a Christmas tree on the White House lawn.
No, the White House kitchen will not be kosher. My love of Carnegie tongue and pastrami is not of a religious nature.
By presidential decree, the wearing of a yarmulke is optional.
Israel will not become our fifty-first