The Day of Atonement

Author David Liss once again has made history come alive.  The Day of Atonement is a quick moving, suspenseful story of life in Lisbon during the Inquisition.  His ability to write about historical facts interwoven with a personal story makes the time period feel realistic and immediate.

This is the story of what it was like to be a New Christian living and doing business during the 1700s in Lisbon, Portugal.  When Sebastiao Raposa finds himself an orphan of the Inquisition at the age of 13, he escapes to London.  There he is taken in by a benefactor, the notorious bounty hunter, Benjamin Weaver.  He apprentices under Weaver for ten years and then returns to Lisbon disguised as a English businessman.  He is anxious to have his revenge on the men who imprisoned his family.

Sebastian has become a practicing Jew in London even though his family had been "New Christians" Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity generations before but are still the subject of focus by the Inquisition.  Foxx wrestles with atonement and sin.  He goes to Lisbon with the intention of making the priests atone for their sins, but as he begins to exact his violence he is concerned that it will make him as evil as the Inquisition priests.  "Yesterday I had killed in self-defense.  Could I truly kill a man in cold blood?  I had always believed that when the moment came, I would be equal to the task.  Now here it was, and it was no longer simply a matter of rebalancing the scales of justice.  A child's life, a parent's love, hung in the balance, and yet I found that murdering a man, even the most hated of men, was a harder thing than killing in the heat of conflict."

Of course all is not what it seems, as Sebastian Foxx, as he is now known, finds out.  He is ruthless and unafraid, feeling he has nothing to lose.  But as time goes by and he becomes embroiled in many different business plots, his feelings change and his hardness softens.  This could be either an impediment to his success in exacting revenge or it could be his opening up to feelings of vulnerability again.  He indeed has a conscience that guides him through life.

This is a book of suspense, subterfuge and romance.  The reader is pulled in from the beginning and is left sitting on the edge of his chair till the final page.  Characters who seem loyal may turn on you to save their own skin and fill their personal coffers.  Foxx learns he cannot trust anyone until the final ship has sailed.