Dr. Owen Whitfield is the elderly Oxford University
professor of history who first appeared in Michael
O’Brien’s novel,
The Father’s Tale. In the events of
The Sabbatical, which occur some time later, Dr.
Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of
peace and quiet, gardening in his back yard, and
tinkering on what he calls his latest “unpublishable
book.”
As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of
seeming coincidences into involvement with a group
of characters from across Europe, including a family
that has been the target of assassination attempts
by unknown powers. During his journey to Romania,
the situation in which he finds himself becomes more
sinister than it first seemed.
The story is ultimately about the tension between
fatalism and the providential understanding of history, about the courage and love that are necessary
for navigating through a confusion of signs, and
about the triumph of faith and reason over the forces
of destruction.
"Michael O'Brien is a superior spiritual story teller
worthy to join the ranks of Flannery O'Connor,
Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and C. S. Lewis.”
-Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Best-selling Author;
Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
“It is difficult to know where to turn for noble
enough analogies in speaking of O’Brien’s writings.
I wonder whether we are going to find Mr. O'Brien's
name taking its place along with those of Mauriac
and Bernanos before too long?”
-Thomas Howard, Author, Dove Descending: A
Journey into T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets