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Tuesday, October 10, 2017

BLOG TOUR SPOTLIGHT: Sometimes the Darkness by Will Campbell


Sometimes the Darkness
by Will Campbell 







A big thank you to Authoright Marketing & Publicity for my spotlilght opportunity on this blog tour! 











American Hanley Martin is troubled by his success. A wealthy aerospace industrialist, he was taught he should help others as a means of balancing the scales for his good fortune. He searches for ways to give back that will comfort his soul. A trip to the Paris Air Show in 1999 changes the course of Martin’s life when the head of a Catholic mission in southern Sudan tells him of the need for pilots to fly medical supplies and visiting doctors to and from their remote clinic and school in Mapuordit, which sits on the refugee trail from Darfur to Kenya. 
Sister Marie Claire, a French nun working at the Mapuordit mission, helps the Sudanese people fleeing the war in Darfur.  She’s crafted a network of volunteers to save the children sold into slavery and forced to work in the country’s more prosperous cities. She needs only one additional piece to complete her plan. 
As Hanley Martin and his plane arrive at Mapuordit, she asks herself if the American may be the answer to her prayers. 


Sometimes the Darkness is the first novel by the author Will Campbell. It tells the story of two people brought together by fate and the price they pay helping a horrific war’s most vulnerable victims.

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You can find my co-reader-in-crime, @jessicamap's, review here on her blog tour spot earlier this month.


SPOTLIGHT:


The protagonist of the novel Sometimes the Darkness is Hanley Martin, a wealthy aerospace industrialist, He was taught he should help others as a means of balancing the scales for his good fortune. He searches for ways to give back that will comfort his soul.

During a trip to the Paris Air Show in 1999, Hanley has a chance conversation with the head of a Catholic mission in southern Sudan who tells him of the need for pilots to fly medical supplies and visiting doctors to and from their remote clinic and school in Mapuordit. The mission is on the refugee trail from Darfur to Somalia and Kenya. He make the decision to interrupt his life to work at this mission station in Africa.
Sister Marie Claire, a French nun working at the Mapuordit mission, helps the Sudanese people fleeing the war in Darfur. As the war in that war plagued region pushes people along the refugee trail, she and the others at the Catholic mission struggled to tend to the needs of the displaced.

Tales of children stolen and sold into slavery haunt the nun. Turning to the church for help, she’s told there is little to be done without the blessing and assistance of the government.  Her decision to find help elsewhere leads to a network of people dedicated to rescuing these children. The nun becomes part of a plan designed to rescue some of the children. After years of organizing and planning, she believes she has a way of rescuing the children. A plan is formed but needs an asset they do not have. She needs only one additional piece to complete her plan. She prays for help Then the American Hanley Martin arrives with his plane to fly medical supplies and visiting doctors to the mission station. The American is the answer to her prayer.
As the American settles into his routines of flying doctors and supplies to and from the mission, he forms a bond with a young Sudanese man, Jumma, who came to the mission as a boy, separated from his family by the war, or the darkness, as his mother sometimes called it. Jumma's dreams of becoming a chef and a life beyond the war he has known become the American’s hope for his new assistant.The relationship with Sister Marie Claire is different, Hanley’s aim of finding some meaning for why he was so fortunate while repaying that debt working at the mission reside with the nun. She believes Hanley is self-absorbed and wasting time with his preoccupation with why he was so successful. She has little time or sympathy for the emotional needs of a wealthy American industrialist. With time running out for implementing her plan and the children it will save, the nun works to bend the pilot to her will and the will of God, whose hand she believes is guiding their lives and fates.

After resisting the nun’s entreaties to fly a rescue mission, he finally relents. The day of the rescue begins before dawn, before most of the mission is awake. Members of the nun’s network have rescued ten children and taken them to Kosti, a small city on the edge of the White Nile, where Hanley Sister Marie Claire and Jumma will meet them. As the rescue unfolds, things go awry. Wounded in a bizarre turn of events, the American manages to fly the plane from immediate danger.For Hanley Martin, the fear is the worst of it. Eleven lives are in his hands and he is failing, the bullet’s damage much greater than he first believed. He must stay awake, needing only a few more minutes to get his plane to Shambe half-way to Mapuordit where they can get help and the children will be safe. Just when he thinks  he can’t go on, he hears it.


Sitting on the floor of the old plane’s cargo hold, the newly rescued children, raise their voices together in a lyrical chant, hoping to keep the American awake, long enough to save them. At that moment there is little working for the wounded pilot and his damaged plane except the children and their song of hope.

About the Author:


Will Campbell is the pen name of Stephen Weir. He lives in Charleston and Greenville, WV. Stephen Weir is a former certified economic developer (CEcD) with over thirty years experience managing economic development organisations from the city to state level. He has also worked in international trade, helping establish the West Virginia’s first international trade office in Nagoya, Japan. He has previously published economic development articles and op-ed pieces in the Economic Development Review, West Virginia Executive Magazine and the Charleston Daily Mail and Gazette. His interest in politics, literature and writing led to the penning of his debut novel.







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