Trailer Park Tuesday: The Whipping Club by Deborah Henry

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

“Welcome to the Whipping Club.”  And with those five words, actor Eric Roberts--as a cane-wielding priest--closes out the haunting trailer for Deborah Henry's debut novel.  While you may or may not be convinced that Roberts is a slimy man of the cloth (I, for one, could never believe I was watching anyone but Eric Roberts in a collar), there is no denying the power of Henry's story about the guilt which plagues a young mother in 1960s Dublin after she delivers her baby in secret, gives him up for what she believes is adoption to an American couple, then discovers--after ten years--that her son has been institutionalized in a notorious Catholic orphanage and his life is now in danger.  The book trailer for The Whipping Club is just one scene from that harrowing tale: a priest interrogates the young boy about his preference for girls and whether or not he “diddles himself” when he's alone.  It's not an easy scene to watch, but then neither are news reports of genocide in Rwanda or documentaries about poverty in Appalachia.  They're not easy, but they're necessary if we want to acknowledge the unsafe, uncomfortable lives which lie beneath the cool, clean surface of society.  Novelist Caroline Leavitt (Pictures of You) praised the novel by saying, “Harrowing, haunting, and brilliantly written, Henry’s stunner of a novel is about secrets, so-called sins, and the way even the deepest scars can begin to heal.  So breathtakingly good it seems burned into your heart.”  Likewise, this trailer will be burned onto your eyes.