In The King in Purgatory, Travis Nelson has gone from commanding a Texas real estate empire to hiding at a small abbey in Norway. A disastrous deal with a Mexican cartel has made him a wanted man, and his survival depends on living as “Professor Price,” a Canadian academic among Cistercian monks. Travis arrives convinced he’ll find a way out. Instead, the abbey gives him time to face what he did to his wife and children while he was busy building a fortune. Author Robert DeLuca makes that change tangible: a man who once measured success in money and influence learns to value a walk through fresh snow, a useful day’s work, and a chance to tell his daughter he loves her.

The monks give the novel much of its warmth. Abbot Martinez protects his community with a firmness Travis can’t negotiate away, while Brother Dominic, the sharp-tongued librarian, becomes the friend who can tease him and still understand when he’s hurting. Their exchanges are funny because neither man lets the other play a grand role for long. Travis also brings his old skills into the abbey. After a bakery fire, he helps rebuild its operation; later, he plans repairs to the monks’ worn living quarters. Those projects give his remorse somewhere to go. He can’t erase his choices in Texas, but he can pay attention to the people in front of him and make their lives a little better.

The story reaches well beyond the abbey. Travis’s children are pursuing their own lives and a crooked businessman back in America, while his growing closeness with Astrid, a Molde librarian, puts his carefully guarded identity at risk. Family drama, romance, and crime suspense keep pressing on one another as Travis tries to reconnect with the people he misses. DeLuca gives the book a generous scope, moving from quiet conversations in Norway to a tense family reunion in the Caribbean and the legal reckoning Travis knows may come. Some stretches pause to explain a character’s history or the workings of a deal, but that detail also shows how many lives remain connected to Travis’s past.

What I liked most is the book’s interest in what an apology can do when the damage is real and time has passed. Travis wants his family back, yet each of them has had to live through his absence in a different way. Diane’s choices, in particular, give that question weight. The abbey changes Travis, but it can’t decide anyone else’s future for them. That makes his efforts to reach his family feel more moving than a simple promise to be a better man. The King in Purgatory finds its heart in the daily work of becoming someone others might trust again.

Pages: 348 | ASIN : B0FRNB4QNT