Caputo puts his 'Faith' in the details, not emotions

Acts of Faith
By Philip Caputo
Knopf, 669 pp., $26.95

In ''A Rumor of War," Philip Caputo's widely praised 1977 memoir, he recounts his experiences as a platoon commander in the first combat unit sent to fight in Vietnam. He offers a harrowing but deeply moving treatment of the war's impact on the Vietnamese and the young American soldiers who were sent over to fight. Caputo's personal observations and considerations of war's effect on the human spirit -- its capacity for hope and solace in the face of extreme horror -- frame the brutal action on the ground and in the sky. In his latest novel, the expertly constructed yet emotionally stale ''Acts of Faith," it seems that the author's experience as a soldier and a philosopher of conflict remains his primary muse.

Set in 1990s Sudan, ''Acts of Faith" follows a group of men and women brought together by their varying degrees of altruism to help a country besieged by political unrest, religious instability, stultifying poverty, and the enigmatic draw of Africa, a ''land of unintended consequences." At the book's center is Douglas Braithwaite, a young, irrepressibly charming American pilot who comes to Africa to make a difference. His determination to deliver food and medical supplies to parts of the country ignored by the government and the United Nations is driven by a deep sense of humanitarian sanctimony -- as well as a dark past he is desperate to keep hidden.

With the help of some wealthy local investors, Douglas establishes Knight Air, a fleet of airplanes that cater to various small aid agencies in Africa. His most frequent mission flies to an area in southern Sudan called the Nuba, a war-torn land ruled by murahaleen (holy warriors used as raiders by the government), and rogue rebel forces. These dangerous, illegal missions travel over no-fly zones established to squelch the most violent, turbulent areas of the country. For Douglas and many other characters around him, the perils of the job are secondary, because for them ''relief work . . . reaffirm[s] the human bond." But as Douglas grows more successful, his definition of relief work becomes questionable.

Douglas's right-hand man is Fitzhugh Martin, a once renowned Kenyan footballer, now in his mid-30s, who led a lost life before meeting Douglas. Amiable and deeply adoring of his boss, Fitz is meant to be the book's hero, though he doesn't claim center stage until the end, when a sudden (and uncharacteristic) surge of detective prowess and penetrating eloquence is bestowed upon him. He also gets entangled in a love affair with Lady Diana Brigg, a rich white woman approaching middle age who still has the ''cool beauty of a statue." Texan and Knight Air business partner Wesley Dare is an experienced bush pilot in his 50s and is as uncouth as they come. ''Ugly as a home-grown sin," Dare manages to steal Mary English, his young model-like copilot, from her younger pilot boyfriend, thus causing the first of many cracks in Knight Air's well-maintained facade.

Odd couples such as these seem to be the norm around the offices of Knight Air, but Caputo takes the trend into the bush with Quinette Hardin, a 20-something evangelical Christian from Iowa who works as a ''redeemer," buying back slaves captured by Arab armies with money raised by her church back in the States. Despite being gawky and plain, her liturgical zeal catches the eye of Lt. Col. Michael Goraende, the head of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, a rebellious faction.

''Acts of Faith" is flawlessly researched, and Caputo's gift for setting is masterful. His grasp of mechanics, firearms, aeronautics, military strategy, history, myth, and religion affirms that a superior journalist is at work behind the scenes. (Caputo won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his work at the Chicago Tribune.)

And yet, the problem with such verisimilitude in a book with so many characters is that the research becomes too apparent and smothers the opportunity for the characters to come alive. As a result, many characters sound like talking heads for the symbolic personalities they've been assigned, delivering wooden dialogue and overly scripted inner monologues.

This exposes a larger problem: the book's omniscient form of narration. Despite switching focus from one character to the next, the story is always told in the same direct, expository way, so that the reader isn't encouraged to do anything more than just listen. The tone is flat and informative, with emotional depth being sacrificed in favor of speedy plot summations and overstated revelations.

When Caputo attempts to merge the empirical with the emotional, it can be just as unconvincing. The idea that Ibrahim Idris, a warlord renowned for his fanatical faith and skills as a terrorist, is just a romantic at heart who pines for his lost love and wants the fighting to end strains credibility.

In the end, Caputo's characters seem to function only as game pieces that cast no shadows on his perfectly rendered landscapes. But he has deftly constructed a complicated web of narrative threads, and, despite some shaky plot points, we stick with him and his characters, as -- despite their best intentions -- they rise and fall from grace.

Nathaniel Bellows is the author of the novel ''On This Day."