To Seek A Newer World

The major character in To Seek a Newer World epitomizes something of his nation's history. He is Dr. Daniel Rutherford, a young man returning home from sorrow in the United States. He had gone there and then to England to study and had married an Afro-Caribbean lady, only to see her die of embolism shortly after the birth of their baby. He is returning home to reclaim his African identity and to carve out a new life. Daniel Rutherford's story is a moving odyssey of pain, disillusion and frustrated idealism-one that leads from the shadow of the valley of death to a tranquillity and capacity for love he never thought possible. Daniel Rutherford is a character few readers will forget. Nor will they forget the other characters who appear in To Seek a Newer World: Pastor Peter Rutherford (Daniel Rutherford's father) with his strange, black suit, the high priest who buys the suit by offering him a cow, Dr. Felix Kamara, Daniel Rutherford's bosom friend and confidant, Kla Wilson, who tries to poison Daniel....Compassionate and kindhearted Maureen, Daniel Rutherford's second wife, who has a stabilizing influence on him despite the vicissitudes of life. In To Seek a Newer World, Robert H. Brown has created a rich tapestry of the woes, delights and contradictions of life and love in a modern, mythical republic, a universal metaphor for the human condition.