Foreword

So I've written a novel. I actually started it in 2000 and finished it in the spring of last year, 2008. I had it "in me," so to speak, and now it's "out," and it's a good feeling to be able to say that I've done it. I have always known that the chances of it ever being published and marketed in the conventional manner are quite slim indeed. More lately, I have come to realize that I simply lack the passion to make finding a bona fide literary agent the consuming focus of my life. It's not that I don't think my work is worth it--I do--but I have, as they say, "a life," and that life is more important to me than getting my book published. I have no designs on whatever wealth literary success might bring, and I'm not all that keen on the fame either. So the internet, and a free blogging account, enable me to self-publish on the cheap, and make my story available to those who are interested.

I was always taught that one should write about what one knows. That advice, combined with my natural laziness and lack of motivation to do research, led me to make the main character an Episcopal priest on the cusp of turning fifty. That described me when I began the work. Beyond that, this is not an autobiographical story, for a number of reasons that will be evident to anyone who knows me. My knowledge of the daily working world of a parish pastor, and the peculiar demands that someone called to that vocation deals with, give me the skeleton on which I can hang my narrative. I would like to think that the same broad themes which I hope emerge in the imagination of the attentive reader would lend themselves to explication in any number of other narrative contexts. The life of a middle-aged Episcopal priest is simply the context I know best.

The story is set mostly in the Chicago area, framed on either end by events occurring in southeastern Wisconsin. Many of the places and communities mentioned are real, while others are entirely fictitious. Those who are familiar with the Chicago area will be able to tell the difference. Others, presumably, will not care. On the off chance that anyone will actually notice this, I may as well acknowledge that the majority of surnames of the incidental characters are those of people I went to school with in the Chicago suburbs in the 1950s and 60s. Trust me--it's purely random. There is no intended (or even unintended) connection between the characters and the people whose names I borrowed for them.

If this novel were a movie, it would be R-rated, for occasional "language" and "adult situations." Caveat lector.

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Enjoy.