Book review: Just how much redemption in Every Drop of Blood is Red?

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Every Drop of Blood is Red

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Umar Turaki  | New York: Little A

$24.99  |  286pp

Personal limits, evolution, flaws, and agendas are on the mind of Umar Turaki in Before, the taut opening half of Every Drop of Blood is Red, the Kelowna prof’s second novel. So is the question of how much redemption is possible for anybody in a deeply imperfect world.

The novel begins on a tenor that wouldn’t be out of place in an Ian McEwan novel. Dareng Pamson, the ostensibly reformed proprietor of a mechanic’s shop in Jos, Nigeria, has chapters of his past that he strives to forget. Now, in 2018, his marriage is reeling after a new misstep — infidelity. Contrite, Dareng comprehends that apologies aren’t enough.

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When Murmula Denge, an agreeable young woman, shows up seeking employment, both Dareng and his wife Rahila are wary, though for understandably different reasons. With Murmula, Turaki shifts the balance of his story with a vengeance trope that announces the course to come: cat and mouse — or perhaps cat and cat — are bound to tussle.

Seemingly pious and earnest, Murmula has vowed to earn Dareng’s trust. She’ll act once his guard is down.

Murmula’s fiery with murderous schemes, absolutely, but in her view the man was responsible for catastrophic losses — not least, her father and mother.

When After, the novel’s next half, begins another catastrophe has occurred. This one — a local religious leader calls the global phenomenon a “miraculous event” — extends as far as the White House. In contrast to the suburban anguish of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, the pulpy action of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ Left Behind series, or the zany irreverence of American Dad’s “Rapture’s Delight” episode, Turaki’s “miraculous event” seems largely decorative, an extra coating of buttercream on a cake that’s sufficiently iced.

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My guess is such an event was conceived as a catalyst — the perfect accelerant for radical soul-searching and self-discovery. In Every Drop of Blood is Red, though, the plot device remains idle, narratively-speaking. It’s a weird, worldwide bummer that occasionally alters the focus of the novel but mostly registers as a strange choice, an unnecessary deus ex machina imported to help aid the moral development of Dareng and Murmula. After all, there’s nothing like the end of the world to force a person to see what’s truly important. It’s as though a UFO landed or an enormous black hole opened in plain sight and the characters note it and carry on with their jobs. Providing little to the plot and even less to the characters, it’s ultimately an puzzling extra in the novel, a what-inspired-that? turn.

Turaki displays greater finesse with the Murmula versus Dareng showdown. After two failed murder schemes, a handgun comes into play as the antagonists’ manoeuvres lead them to a common address. As truths are told and decisive actions taken, the author returns to his appealing dramatization of redemption and personal evolution. Far easier said than done, he implies. But not impossible.

Salt Spring Island resident Brett Josef Grubisic is the author of five novels, including My Two-Faced Luck and The Age of Cities.

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