It was 9:00 A.M., October 24, 2022. The reporters of the Catholic Weekly of Los Angeles met in the chief editor’s office for their special assignments.
“This cult leader is influencing some St. Mark’s seminarians from his throne in a nearby café.”
“I’ll take that one,” Teresa grinned enthusiastically.
And so began the conversion of Michael Kaufman.
“This story is a delightful witness to the wonder of the Catholic faith, the Sacraments and the Catholic priesthood.” – Marti Armstrong, M.S., Pastoral Counselor
“Once again, my friend Rhonda Chervin has produced a very provocative book: The Messiah of Metro Cafe. It is both historical and contemporary at the same time. I highly recommend this book as a source of enlightenment to all readers.” – Robert Sizemore, Retired Sociology Professor
“Another wonderful creation by the insightful writer-philosopher Ronda Chervin. Her realistic characters use dialogue to explore important ideas and move the narrative as Dostoyevsky does. Thus, Dr. Chervin evangelizes through literature.” – Kathy Campitelli – Art Teacher
“Readers, this is a page turner. Ronda Chervin’s writing style flourishes with personal little details to help the reader identify with each person you meet as you read this little gem. The kernels of wisdom introduced through the various perspectives of Michael, Teresa and the seminarians add sparkle to the discussions. Anyone interested in the struggles of religious life is certainly going to encounter provocative discussion points to ponder and discuss with friends. Love the Metro Café’s description and setting, detailed by strong visible adjectives. Ronda Chervin’s gift for exposition works beautifully as she creates settings for the weekly meetings. The reader can pick up hints by studying the author’s talents for developing character, dialogue, plot, setting and intriguing details so readers feel part of the story!” – David E. Dowd, Catholic Street Preachers, Poet-Pro Life Activist, Erstwhile Free Lance Writer
Ronda Chervin, Ph.D. is a professor of Philosophy, widow, grandmother, and great grandmother. She has taught at Loyola Marymount University, St. John’s Seminary of Los Angeles, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Our Lady of Corpus Christi, and Holy Apostles Seminary and College. She is the author of numerous books about Catholic living and presents on EWTN and Catholic Radio. Most well known of her books are The Way of Love, Treasury of Women Saints, Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering: How our Heroes in Faith Found Peace amid Sorrow, and, most recently, with co-author Albert Hughes: Escaping Anxiety on the Road to Spiritual Joy.
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Grace is an aspiring fashion designer with a loving family and a crazy cat named Kitten Kaboodle. She loves the Latin Mass, spending time with family and friends, and bringing fantasy to life through her hobbies, including co-producing with Chantal LaFortune of The Song of Elbereth. If she could tell you one thing, she’d ask you to make God smile.
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This is a story of a journey, written to help young people deal with grief and loss. Every journey has a beginning. Every journey has a starting point, when a person’s life takes a turn and he starts on the path that will be his life for the rest of his time on this earth. Everyone’s life is a journey, but this particular journey – this particular story – is the life of a boy named Radbertus Corbie, who became an orphan, became a squire, became a knight, and became a child of God.
Paperback: $14.95 | Kindle/Nook: $9.99
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Three teenagers are drawn into the hidden underside of Elizabethan England: a world where how you pray can get you hanged, and misplaced trust can kill. Catholicism is forbidden in this world, and Catholics walk the line between faith and fear. Protestant Stephen distrusts treacherous Papists but values his friendship with Catholic Hugh; Hugh and Bridget resent Protestant tyranny but find themselves relying on Stephen’s help – and his silence. All of them understand both less and more than their parents realize of the dangers hovering on the margins of their lives. And this is the kind of volatile mix that can put nooses round necks.
Paperback: $19.95 / £14.59 | Kindle: $9.99
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“In The Guest of Night, Lucy Underwood-Healy shows that choosing Christ means choosing faith and friendship, and choosing courage over fear. By unveiling the nature of life in Elizabethan England, Underwood-Healy demonstrates the subtle workings of grace even throughdark and dangerous times.” – Megan Lovar, student at Christendom College, click here to read her review
“So few historical novels actually manage to capture the feel of an age. . . . Three things that really lift this book up: One, the writing: sharp, lively, tight, it draws you in and zips along. Two, the historical detail: the author is a professional historian and it shows – in a good way. … And three, what will stay with me the longest: the really vividly conjured sense of what it was actually like to live under a regime of religious persecution. The Catholic characters at the heart of the book, and also the Protestant characters recalling earlier ages’ persecutions (a minor but crucial theme of the book), give you a truly compelling sense of living against a background of fear, of endlessly making choices that will probably be safe but could always be lethal, of the fragile consolations people reach for to tell themselves that everything will be all right when they are well aware that it might not be. And yet finding a way of actually living despite it all. It’s haunting but also, in the end, unmistakably hopeful – and that really is a tough trick to pull off.” – excerpt from Good Reads review by Alec Ryrie, Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and a licensed lay preacher in the Church of England; author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt
“The Guest of Night is a thrilling tale filled with adrenaline, courage, and lessons in wisdom. Read by the author herself, one is transported into Elizabethan England. Lucy Underwood-Healy’s narration is expressive, and draws the listener further into the story, to sympathize and admire all that our Catholic ancestors suffered for the sake of Christ, of truth, and of love.” -Thérèse Judeana, author of Ransom: Shadow of An Empire
“The book that took me by surprise was this belting Tudor thriller / rite of passage story . . . [The Guest of Night].” – Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Children’s Laureate and Carnegie Medal (2004)
“Lucy Underwood Healy writes with impressive lucidity and authenticity. From the very beginning of The Guest of Night, we are immersed in a world of dangerous intrigue, rich historical detail and acute observation. She has created a cast of full-blooded characters whose story will absorb and engage us.” – Nick Warburton, Winner of the BBC/Radio Times Drama Award, the Sandford St Martin Award and the Tinniswood Award
Lucy Underwood-Healy grew up in Cambridge, England. She received her BA in History and English from Oxford University, and completed postgraduate studies at Cambridge University. The Guest of Night, her first novel, grew in symbiosis with her research into Elizabethan England and its religious conflicts. A mother and scholar as well as a writer, she lives in St Albans, England with her husband and children.
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“In this moving, evocative novel, which describes a few days in the life of a fourteen-year-old boy during the hurricane that came close to destroying New Orleans, a new and fine voice emerges from the South. Daniel Fitzpatrick integrates compelling narrative with a unique poetic sense, probing the deep waters—one might say the flood waters—of youth’s conflicts, of love and friendship, of doubt and faith in a time of grave trial. As the central character struggles through internal and external turmoil, he gropes for understanding of how to deal with the collapse of security, and with his parents’ wounds and the ancestral inheritances of psyche and culture on both sides of his family. Gradually the author shows us the soul’s journey through powerlessness towards mysterious hope and ultimate faith in life. The story is about a natural disaster, of course, and yet more than this: it is a living metaphor of the devastating spiritual flood that has swept through a once-Christian civilization, leaving inestimable damage, confusion, corruption, displacement, and death in its wake. Above all, it tells the perennial story of man’s search for the meaning of his human identity, and his eternal value, in the midst of catastrophe.” ~ Michael D. O’Brien
“A beautiful novel – fresh and inspiring!” ~ Ronda Chervin
“Only the Lover Sings is an elegy to youth and an act of faith. Daniel weaves myth and reality, faith and fantasy, certainty and longing in to a story that will challenge the reader. While our lives can seem to revolve on certain remembered moments, the author shows that they can be affected equally by a hurricane as by an unsaid word. He writes with grace both bringing forth the sacramental in passing moments and describing the concrete reality of attending high school. For the author, it is a description of a pilgrimage. For the reader, it is the beginning of one. The book cuts through the modern fixation on identity to ask if we can love others who do not share our defining beliefs.” ~ Capt. Patrick Brehany, U.S. Army
“A fascinating story of loss and discovery, clashing the theme of the coming of age of a teenage boy with an odyssey through tragedy, faith, and deeper meaning.” ~ Fr. Thomas Schaefgen, O.P., Catholic Chaplain, Tulane University
Daniel Fitzpatrick grew up in New Orleans, LA, studied Philosophy at the University of Dallas, and lives in Hot Springs, AR, with his wife and two children. His poems and essays have been widely published. Only the Lover Sings, his first novel, explores his memory of Hurricane Katrina and seeks to reveal the weight of glory bound up in each moment of human life.
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Morgan O’Bryan, studying for the priesthood at St. Francis Seminary, comes under the tutelage of Father Christopher. Father Christopher suspects that Morgan might possess the gift of healing, and he wants to introduce Morgan to the knowledge of and access to God’s miracles. However, Father Christopher suffers from WWI battle fatigue, and many at the seminary think the old priest is just crazy. Morgan nevertheless accepts Father Christopher’s friendship, but he discovers that the challenge of learning to share in Divine wisdom and miraculous experiences is no easy path, for along this journey he will come to know love, betrayal, even death. Will he endure?
Paperback: $14.95 | Hardback: $19.95 | Kindle/Nook: $9.99
“Children of Slate is a fascinating, rare, and honest exploration of the seminarian’s call to celibacy. One’s sexual human nature and the fallen state of sin are not checked at the seminary door but rather must be grappled with in the context of faith and discernment of vocation while grace, miracles, spiritual direction, love, and friendship also play their vital and interconnected roles in this very candid novel.” – Kiki Latimer, Catholic Author and Presenter
“In Children of Slate, Thom Brucie explores belief, reason, and sensuality in a way that I have not seen before. Rather than pitting these qualities against each other, Brucie interweaves them convincingly in the lives and minds of his characters. The result? An honest exploration of faith. A thought-provoking read. – Mark Ezra Stokes, Founder of Holistic Storyteller
“Thom Brucie’s latest novel, Children of Slate, takes a close look at the relationships between faith, love, hope, and miracles and reveals that love tempers all the rest when supported by faith and the “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” the presence of God and his miracles in all aspects of an unknown future. – Ronald Hugar, PhD, Rhetorician, University of Indianapolis
“Thom Brucie’s Children of Slate is a beautifully written book about the spiritual battles of a young seminarian, who is struggling with monastic life and the vow of celibacy. Very revealing with a gripping poetic ending. It’s a must read by a great writer.” – Joe Avalos, author of Cry Oneness
Children of Slate is Thom Brucie’s surprising exploration of God’s great joy in bringing miracles to this earthly journey we call life.
His other works include the novel Weapons of Cain, a Vietnam War tale of cultural discovery; a book of short stories, Still Waters: Five Stories, themed stories around the topic of death; and two chapbooks of poems, Moments Around The Campfire With A Vietnam Vet, poems of veteran’s experiences, and Apprentice Lessons, poems celebrating Brucie’s carpentry apprenticeship and some lessons learned. Dr. Brucie earned his PhD from Binghamton University and MA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Brucie is Professor of English at South Georgia State College where he teaches English and Creative Writing. Find out more about Thom Brucie on his website at ThomBrucie.com.
See Thom’s recent article entitled “Concerning Love” in Agape Review (August 23, 2021)
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