Each Angel Burns

One of the good things about going through a down-time in your life is that can often be the impetus to do something different. The last several weeks since my father died have been strange for me. Nothing in my day-to-day life has changed at all but emotionally I’m just not fully engaged. I work as much as I have to but otherwise — well, I’ve read a lot of books.

I also got out the manuscript of a novel I wrote the first draft of in 2004 and then put away. That seems to be my pattern with writing. I write something and then I need to almost forget about it before I can go back and re-read and decide if I want to keep working on it.

Right now My Last Romance and other passions is out and has been selling modestly which is what I expected. The Old Mermaid’s Tale, which I had intended to have available on Valentine’s Day, is still with a carefully selected group of readers who are giving it a finally, careful read before I send it off to press. So it is time to move on and I did that by unearthing novel #2.

The working title of the book was Triad but I am changing that. In fact it will be called Each Angel Burns which is a line from Ranier Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies:

Who, if I cried, would hear me, of the angelic
orders? or even supposing that one should suddenly
carry me to his heart - I should perish under the pressure
of his stronger nature. For beauty is only a step
removed from a burning terror we barely sustain,
and we worship it for the graceful sublimity
with which it disdains to consume us. Each angel burns.

I think it is an appropriate title particularly concerning the subject matter which is complex — I need to develop and “elevator speech” for my books. The story is contemporary about three people, now in their fifties, with long histories together, who are all facing huge life changes. Peter is a Jesuit priest and professor of Classical Languages at a Catholic college who has, after many, many years, re-encountered the only woman he ever loved. Gabe is Pete’s best friend from boyhood, a married father of three daughters who has been unhappy in his marriage for years and now discovers that his wife is cheating on him. Maggie, a sculptor who has purchased an old abandoned convent which she intends to convert into studios, is the woman Pete once loved who is now separated from her rich but abusive husband. The whole story centers around the long and mysterious history of the convent, St. Gabriel’s (Gabe’s mother once dreamed of being a nun there and named him for it) where a magnificent statue of the Angel Gabriel that once guarded the entrance has been stolen and cannot be traced.

There are also a lot of wonderful secondary characters. Gabe’s crabby old father Mick and his aging hippy brother and sister-in-law Mike and Daisy; Pete and Gabe’s high school football team buddies, Charlie, Vinnie, Whitey and Bull (who is an unrepentant philanderer); Josef Stoltzfus, Gabe’s Amish neighbor who loves stopping to have a beer with the guys; and, best of all, Gabe’s wonderful, wise, and entirely unfaithful hound dog, Zeke.

So these are good people to be with me in this strange time in my life. They know what it is like to be in your fifties and wondering how the hell did I get this old and still be so confused. Each of my angels burns.... and writing is good.

Thanks for reading.