Tom Bedlam
Page 43
The residents of Saint-Agnant have appealed to the authorities to release their priest and petitioned the mon-signor to send him back to the parish. Four marriages stand to be annulled; three christenings and ten burials in this small region will have to be performed again if he is proved to be an impostor.
When Dr. Tom Chapel of Gantrytown was informed by this reporter that his son had been found in France, he confessed that this was the best news a father could hope to hear. “I feel very fortunate and have no doubt that Arthur felt an obligation to help these people,” he said. “I believe in Arthur, and am sure that he is the hero they believe him to be.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the remarkable firsthand experiences of my grandfather, Aldhelm Joseph Slater. His unpublished memoir, The Recollections of a Johannesburg Man, provided me with invaluable details about life in colonial South Africa and on the battlefields of World War I. I would like to thank my wife, Terri Seligman, for her patient reading and insight, Henry Dunow for his inspirational counsel, Carole Welch for her sharp attention to character and dramatic integrity, and Hazel Orme, whose scrutiny of my characters' words and deeds was invaluable. All subsequent lapses in judgment are mine alone. Finally, my appreciation goes to Ann Brown, Laura Ford for her aid and early support, and my editor, Jennifer Hershey whose enthusiasm and focus helped to bring the story alive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GEORGE HAGEN is the author of The Laments,
a Washington Post bestseller that won the William
Saroyan International Prize for writing. Hagen had lived
on three continents by the time he was twelve; he now
lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
For more information, visit www.georgehagen.com.
Tom Bedlam is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by George Hagen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hagen, George
Tom Bedlam: a novel/George Hagen
p.cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-54816-0
1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3608.A36B44 2007
813'.6—dc22 2006051089
www.atrandom.com
v3.0