Angels and beasts in war-torn Sudan

Acts of Faith

A Novel

Philip Caputo

Alfred A. Knopf: 676 pp., $26.95

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Caputo has always been ambitious. He likes to draw on a huge canvas, cram in as much action and authenticating detail as possible and infuse each character with metaphysical resonance. Whether in nonfiction (“A Rumor of War”) or fiction (“DelCorso’s Gallery”), Caputo demonstrates an almost maniacal determination to involve the reader. This leads at times to long explanatory passages and repetition of points that are already clear. But at his best, Caputo creates narratives whose brute strength allows for surprising subtlety.

His new novel, “Acts of Faith,” is as massive and sprawling as its African setting. Early on, its pace might seem a bit too leisurely. But in the end, every authorial choice in this tale about the misery of the civil war in Sudan serves a purpose, reinforcing the book’s epigraph, adapted from 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal: “Whoever tries to turn angel turns beast.”

Caputo’s Sudan has attracted a miscellany of characters whose expressed desire is to help the southern tribes, mostly black and Christian or animist, against the authorities in the capital of Khartoum, who are mostly Arab and Islamic. American pilot Douglas Braithwaite’s goal is to do well by doing good. Not averse to making a profit, he agrees, at considerable risk, to fly humanitarian aid to isolated Nuban villages.

Braithwaite’s partners support his goal but for different reasons. Wesley Dare, an aging Vietnam vet, has little tolerance for moral campaigns and keeps flying to build a nest egg for himself and his female copilot.

Fitzhugh Martin, a mixed-race Kenyan, is searching for an identity and a role to play on a continent that is redefining itself. When he takes up with a rich, older white woman, Lady Diana Briggs, he questions his motives in love just as he does in every other arena. A soul in the balance, vacillating between Braithwaite’s Boy Scout enthusiasm and Dare’s jovial cynicism, Fitzhugh goes along -- even when the mission changes and they begin ferrying military hardware as well as food and medicine. Braithwaite justifies this by claiming, “It’s what we have to do to keep doing what we came here to do.” Fitzhugh has his doubts -- as well he should since Braithwaite ultimately becomes so obsessed with business that he’ll do anything to eliminate competition.

In a parallel plot, Quinette Hardin, an American evangelical, arrives in Africa with no doubts. She has come with the World Wide Christian Union to ransom black slaves captured by Arab raiders. But she finds herself increasingly in a state of emotional upheaval and ethical relativism. To her shock, she responds positively to the austere landscape and falls in love with a leader of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. She winds up marrying him and wedding herself so thoroughly to a cause and a way of life that her belief system collapses almost without her realizing it. In the end, she’s willing to accept terrorism, murder and, ironically, the very slavery she came to the Sudan to eradicate.

Lest this make “Acts of Faith” sound like an abstract novel of ideas, it should be emphasized that every theme is dramatized. Caputo not only captures the look and smells of Africa, but he also conveys as few novelists can its mayhem, random violence and pitched battles.

His action sequences are successful not simply because of their vividness and intensity, but because of his ability to identify -- and to persuade a reader to empathize -- with human beings caught up in harrowing circumstances.

Caputo also changes the point of view from time to time, presenting scenes from the Arab perspective, affording full humanity to the enemy and offering insight into Islamic beliefs that range from the moderate to the militant. What’s more, he creates credible African characters. Quinette’s husband and his family come across not as mere ethnographic studies or a cobbling together of cliches, but as individuals distinguished by their inner lives, not just their exotic tribal customs.

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Michael Mewshaw is the author of six works of nonfiction and 10 novels, most recently, “Island Tempest.”