Author of St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club and Baxter's Friends
St. Michael’s Poker & Drinking Club
by Ned Randle
Regal House Publishing
book review by Nicole Yurcaba
“Could socializing with a Catholic priest be worse than socializing with whores and tax collectors? It was a question that finally led him to fret over the paradoxical effect hierarchical edicts of any hidebound church had on the lives of lonely men.”
After the death of his beloved stray cat, Father Thomas Abernathy, a dedicated priest at Saint Michael’s Parish, realizes his life is lonelier than he originally intended. In an effort to thwart the nagging confines of priestly solitude, Father Tom brings together a Methodist minister, a Lutheran pastor, and a billboard-gracing evangelical, forming the St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club. Father Tom quickly develops a friendship with Theo Swindberg, the Lutheran pastor whose wife, Naomi, receives an aggressive cancer diagnosis. In a breach of church tenets, but in an act of true friendship, Theo asks Father Tom to pray for Naomi, a move that will send both men down a path that tests the limits of not only their faiths and the church doctrines they advocate and uphold but also their friendship and free will.
In philosophical, humanistic prose, this book explores the multifaceted, complex lives of men and women who devote themselves to faiths and tenets often at odds with the instincts of human nature.
Deeply psychological and emotional in its examination of relationships, free will, and the complexities of the spirit, this book explores a side of some of the world’s foremost Judeo-Christian denominations often hidden from the public eye. In his confessions of loneliness and needs, confusions and doubts, the book’s main character, Father Tom, becomes an everyman to which all can relate, especially as he reaches a controversial resolution that puts him at odds with the very institution he has vowed to uphold. With its prayer-like portrayals of humanness, devotion, and subtle rebellion, this book is sure to become a quick favorite for those needing uplifting and affirmation in a cruel, confusing world.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
Down Cemetery Road is the much-anticipated prequel to the unforgettable Baxter’s Friends. Ned Randle raises the curtain on the formative years of Billy Bright’s life, revealing a formula for his adult years that is at once both intoxicating and utterly sobering. Down Cemetery Road delves into the disillusionment of adolescence sadly often shot down by mid-life.
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