Word: noe
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Prosecutor's Office stem from a widening corruption scandal that since June has forced the resignation of the head of the Bureau of Workers' Compensation and the conviction of Taft's former chief of staff on ethics charges, amidst an ongoing criminal probe of deep-pocketed GOP donor Tom Noe, a rare coin dealer and long time political ally of Taft's. The Ohio Attorney General says Noe stole as much as $4 million from state investment he was managing, and even Noe's lawyers concede that $13 million is missing from the fund...
...Noah, crowded with incident though it is, gets just four brief chapters in Genesis, and Maine has a terrific time romping around in the gaps between the verses, mouthing off in the somber silences between those Old Testament phrases. How does it feel to be 600 years old, as Noe (Maine uses archaic spellings for biblical names) was at the time of the flood? The Bible offhandedly mentions giants--what were those dudes like? Noe's three sons had wives, who presumably had names and personalities and feelings of their own. For Maine, the devilment is in those kinds...
...turns out, much of the fun of The Preservationist lies with Noe's daughters-in-law, who furnish him with a chatty, catty shipboard peanut gallery. His eldest son Sem (usually spelled Shem) is married to unflappable, pragmatic Bera, who gets stuck with a lot of the animal-gathering chores. "The problem with people who think that God will provide," she remarks tartly, "is that they think God will provide." Cham (Ham)--the most skeptical of the sons and the most sympathetic--is paired with mysterious, icy Ilya, a refugee from a northern land who subjects Noe's religious zeal...
...course, Noe has the toughest job, as both servant of an enigmatic, irascible deity and sitcom father to that feuding brood. Maine treats him irreverently, but if he knocks the patriarch down a peg, it's only so that we can re-encounter the hoary Old Testament icon afresh as a sensual, fallible human being and really appreciate his greatness and his sacrifice. The Preservationist reminds us that being God's servant 24/7 is both the ultimate privilege and a hell of a lot of hard work, and Noe is the hardest-working man in the Bible...
There is far more to Noe's story than even a talented writer like Maine could tell in a dozen novels, though here's hoping he tries. As we learn in Genesis 9: 28, "And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years." Three hundred and fifty years? Do I smell a sequel? As Noe's wife wearily, wisely puts it, "The test doesn't end when the flood does. It's only the start." --By Lev Grossman