Of All Faiths & None
and
A Remembrance of Death 

Booklife (Publisher's Weekly)

It’s not the size of the castle but what others think of it,” architect Edwin Lutyens muses early in Tweeddale’s assured debut, a historical saga that, for all its sprawling cast and changing-times thoughtfulness, proves unusually fleet in its storytelling. Lutyens’ observation concerns the act of hubris/genius that serves as the story’s foundation, shipping magnate Lord Julius Drewe’s desire to build an English castle circa 1910, as Europe seems destined for a war. The narrative expands outward from there, as the government requests Drewe’s business move into uniforms and weapons, the castle project faces delays and cutbacks, and—most crucially—the two men’s children grow up and find their way in an inconstant world, facing romances, cultural shifts, their elders’ expectations, and the storm looming over the world. 

Tweeddale writes with crisp clarity, efficiently introducing characters, conflicts, and leaps forward in time, with a welcome focus on scenecraft and sharp dialogue. Though it covers years and many lives while unobtrusively offering readers crucial historical and social context, Of All Faiths & None is a novel of memorably dramatized moments: a father sputtering “You idiot, you damned idiot!” when a son enlists in 1914; a young woman humoring her brother and mother by attending a lecture on “Patriotism & Theosophy,” as a black sheep son considers the question of whether any war can be moral; a nurse rashly married to a soldier realizing, from his letters, that they have little to say to each other.

Of course, that castle—the real Castle Drogo, in England’s Devon county—casts a shadow over all this. Tweeddale follows it from design to founding stone to the burying of family dead there. Tweeddale deftly blends fact and fiction in a story that moves fast yet still makes clear, with each chapter, how time and tragedy change us all. The ending is bittersweet yet satisfying, sure to please lovers of historical epics.