Readers first meet a calculating William Abbey in a World War I army hospital, under the care of an unassuming nurse. Thirty-three years earlier, William watched the lynching of a Zulu boy in Natal but did nothing to stop it. When the boy died, his mother looked at William and cursed him, making him a truth-speaker: he is pursued always by the boy's shadow, and the closer it gets, the more he perceives and is compelled to speak the truth that he sees in the hearts of others. If the shadow catches him, the person he loves the most will die.
In The Pursuit of William Abbey, Claire North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August) combines a sprawling epic of colonial wrongdoing with a tense espionage thriller. Naturally, the British Empire has uses for a truth-speaker, and because William must keep out of the shadow's reach, governmental support that can get him onto a fast train whenever he may need it is invaluable. In his travels, William meets other truth-speakers, with whom he forms bonds that go beyond the governments and causes which they serve.
In rich, compelling prose, North weaves together the threads of imperial control, ideological conviction, love and the thrill of power. Readers will remain eager to the end for answers regarding what brought William to that hospital, and what the nurse to whom he tells his story will do when the time comes for him to execute his plan. The Pursuit of William Abbey is a lyrical and sometimes surreal approach to espionage and its thrills. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library