By Mike Mastromatteo | OSV News
There’s a stirring scene in Robert Dugoni’s new novel “Hold Strong,” in which a tireless Catholic chaplain, heroically ministering to prisoners of war, begins to struggle with his faith.
“Hold Strong,” released in January, is historical fiction based on the experience of U.S. soldiers who braved the infamous Bataan Death March in the middle years of World War II. Co-written with researchers Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree, it is a gripping fictionalized account of a wartime atrocity in danger of fading from popular memory.
Imprisoned by Imperial Japanese forces in the Philippines in 1942, thousands of soldiers suffered harsh captivity and forced marches in jungles, only to be crammed aboard filthy disease-ridden prison ships. The sorry incident was Imperial Japan’s attempt to hide its violation of the Geneva Convention vis-à-vis the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs).
After enduring months of sacrifice and suffering in tending to the spiritual needs of the captives, the chaplain, Father Tom, has a moment of crisis. “I’m no one’s padre and no one’s priest,” he says, “I’m just a man like you all. Stop looking to me for your salvation. I don’t know the way anymore.”
Despite the apparent renunciation, Father Tom continues to pray with and offer last rites to the prisoners right up to the moment he is killed aboard the prison ship.
The treatment of the Father Tom character is based on the real-life chaplain Father Thomas Scecina who died while serving POWs in camps and on prison ships. In “Hold Strong,” Father Tom represents the struggle to hold on to any kind of faith in the most extreme circumstances.
“Father Tom chose to stay with the men through the Bataan Death March, prisoner of war camps and the Japanese hell ships,” Dugoni said in a recent interview with OSV News. “He embodies sacrifice and putting others before himself to bring light, faith and hope into a very dark period in the world’s history. Given the horrific conditions in which Father Tom existed for years and given that Mother Teresa also wrote about her faith crises, Father Tom did briefly struggle with his faith. I can only imagine how hard it must be to not lose hope.”
But Father Tom, and presumably the heroic Father Scecina, held on to their faith and likely experienced the divine grace that is the reward for a life of suffering and sacrifice.
The theme of the persistence of faith in spite of horror, devastation and prolonged suffering is found often in Dugoni’s fiction. Besides “Hold Strong,” many other Dugoni novels clearly reflect the strong Catholic influence in the writer’s work.
Now based in Seattle, Dugoni was born in Idaho and raised in the San Francisco area. He began and completed his law studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, then worked as a prosecutor in San Francisco. In addition to his legal work, Dugoni practiced journalism with a couple of Los Angeles-area newspapers. He devoted himself to full-time writing in 1998.
With the release of “Hold Strong,” Dugoni has now written 26 novels, short stories and one work of nonfiction. While not every one of his books has what might be considered Catholic content, the influence of his Catholic faith and upbringing is readily apparent.
“The Catholic faith has influenced so many aspects of my life, from the way I try to conduct myself, how I parent and how I treat others,” Dugoni said. “Faith is such a universal trait, I’ve learned. So many [readers] of other faiths have found and loved my writing. They describe my novels as tackling difficult subjects but always with a positive, or at least hopeful ending. I always consider that out of the darkness shines the brightest light.”
This notion of light overcoming the darkness shines through in Dugoni’s 2021 book “The World Played Chess.” The book recounts a summer friendship between 18-year-old Vincent Bianco and William, a tormented Vietnam War veteran. Half of the story is told from the perspective of Vincent, who as the story unfolds, graduates from university, builds a career and raises a tightly knit Catholic family. The other part of the story is taken from a journal William kept while serving in Vietnam in the mid 1960s. At the beginning of the story, readers learn of William’s desire to share his wartime journal with Vincent.
Having survived the horror of jungle warfare in Vietnam, William is compelled to share his story, not only to lay bare his experience, but also to pay tribute to all Vietnam war veterans, living or dead.
This story is almost autobiographical. Immediately after high school, Dugoni himself spent a summer working in construction and home renovation, and that’s where he met two Vietnam war veterans who reluctantly shared some of their experience from the front. Little did they know that Dugoni would go on to use their words and recollections to create two fictional characters in his novel.
“The World Played Chess” is especially effective at portraying the horror and disillusionment of U.S. soldiers fighting an apparently meaningless war. The attention to detail and realism captured in William’s war time journal reveals Dugoni’s special talent for recreating the dehumanizing atmosphere of soldiers at war.
Like Father Tom in “Hold Strong,” both Vincent and William struggle with suffering, doubt and loss in the face of cruel fate and circumstance. But in the end, the characters eventually achieve hard-won redemption and understanding.
Dugoni said that questions of faith’s ambiguities and the surrender to disillusionment and cynicism were key elements in plotting “The World Played Chess.”
“The two Vietnam veterans I worked with at that summer job told me they no longer believed in God,” he said in the interview. “They did not believe God would have allowed the horrific suffering they experienced and the horrific loss of so many lives. I didn’t fully understand their lack of belief, just having turned 18. I grew up in a faith-based family, attended Catholic schools and served as an altar boy. To not believe in God was such a foreign concept to me, but also made me consider the same questions. Why does a benevolent God allow so much suffering? I don’t think there is an easy answer, which is what makes it a fascinating subject of discussion.”
Two earlier Dugoni novels — “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” (2018) and “The 7th Canon” (2016) — also demonstrate how the Catholic faith finds its way into Dugoni’s writing oeuvre.
“Sam Hell” focuses on the life and struggles of title character Sam “Hell,” a red-eyed victim of ocular albinism. The story becomes an examination of how “otherness” readily leads to discrimination and rejection. Sam is a gifted student and writer who cannot fathom why some are given special crosses to bear in life. He is often at odds with his devout Catholic mother Marlene, who continually exhorts her son to see God’s will in all things.
In the work’s acknowledgement section, Dugoni describes how the plot and message of his story coalesced. “”I found that thread (to tie the book together) on a drive to, of all places, Mass. I asked myself what did Sam Hell really want throughout his life, and I found that what he wanted was no different than what I wanted — what we all want. Sam wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that God really did have a plan for him and for his life, that his hardships as a child would all help mold for him an extraordinary life. He wanted to believe that his prayers had a purpose, that God truly is benevolent, despite so many in the world so often being malevolent.”
This ongoing sense of wonder about the what and why of earthly things encompasses much of the narrative action in “The 7th Canon.” The story involves a Catholic lawyer Peter Donley, defending a priest Father Martin, from charges of sexual abuse and murder. Both characters have experienced deep emotional trauma in their lives: Donley as the son of an abusive, alcoholic father, and Father Martin as a former street kid who devotes his priestly ministry to homeless, drug addicted urban outcasts.
Towards the novel’s denouement, the protagonist Donley muses on one of mysteries so central to Dugoni’s Catholic imagination. “Donley wondered how a man [Father Martin] who dealt with so much despair, who witnessed children abandoned on the streets like discarded furniture and abused by sick and twisted adults, could have such faith. Where was their God? Where had God been those nights Donley hid beneath his bed, praying? God had not answered his prayers.”
Despite these lingering questions, Dugoni still finds ways in his fiction to cast the church and its priests and religious sisters in a favorable light. He said in the interview, “I think of priests the same way I think of police officers. People love to attack them, sometimes justifiably. But it is a small percentage of police officers and priests who behave badly. Most I have known, growing up and as an adult, are good men who do good things. I understand some people were deeply scarred because of the scandals, and I have great sympathy for them. Those men never should have been priests, and the church should have been more forthright. But I had incredibly positive experiences with priests and with police officers. I think it is important that books portray not just the bad actors, but the good actors as well.”
So where does Robert Dugoni go from here? As a writer lauded for his command of various literary genres, there is plenty of room for Dugoni to explore all kinds of plots, settings and scenarios.
“The past few years I’ve been putting out two and sometimes three books per year,” Dugoni said. “It’s not easy. I can say that I love what I do, and I go to work every day. I’m constantly writing or researching. It is a passion, and I’m blessed to be able to pursue my passion as a career. I always try to remember that. At the same time, I never want the quality of the writing to suffer.”
But wherever Dugoni’s creativity and ease with various genres take him, one suspects there will always be hints of Catholic spirituality in his output.
“I’m a writer who happens to be Catholic,” he said. “I know many writers who write spiritual novels and their Christianity guides what they write. I write novels in which people find faith and spirituality. It is very personal to each reader, and they get their own experience. For me that is best. I never try to preach or tell any reader what to think or how to feel. We all come from different backgrounds and different places and our experiences are uniquely our own.”
Mike Mastromatteo is a writer, editor and book reviewer from Toronto.