Sins Of The Fathers – A Novel

It’s been a long time in the writing, but my first published novel has finally arrived!

Excerpt from Publisher’s Summary:

On an early summer Sunday morning in 1966, young Thomas Baker disappeared from the parking lot of the Immaculate Heart cathedral where he was expected to serve as an altar boy for early mass. His body was later found in the tall grass along the old refinery road—cause of death a single blow to the head. With few suspects and even fewer clues the case went cold almost overnight, leaving nothing more than its ghost to haunt the small town of Superior, Wisconsin.

Fifty years later, as the anniversary of the Baker Boy’s death approaches the specter looms again, and another young boy is killed.

Fifteen-year-old Sean Nolan is found floating in the muddy water of the Nemadji river. Nolan, too, was last seen outside the Immaculate Heart rectory and once again, with clues scarce and no apparent motive for homicide, the case threatens to go cold.

Comparing the eerily similar circumstances of the two homicides, reporter Rita Sullivan can only hope the new tragedy isn’t a copycat crime triggered by her recap of the cold case published in the Superior Telegram. Divorced with no children, and caught in a relationship limbo with no foreseeable future other than a quick end to her career, Rita’s life is full of loose ends she’d rather seen tied in neat bows—and Her grandfather, Pops, couldn’t agree more. That is, until Rita starts asking questions about the cold case Pops failed to solve.

Pops was a police officer with the Superior Department for more than ten years, one of its finest. He worked his way from beat cop to desk sergeant before the Baker Case tarnished his badge. One year later he resigned. Now it seems that Pops would just as soon forget the whole thing ever happened.

With the new homicide, what had been simple reporter’s curiosity about the fifty-year old cold case becomes an obsession for Rita. Convinced that closing the case Pop’s couldn’t will somehow redeem her grandfather, Rita turns her reporter’s instincts loose on the church and its known history of hiding pedophile priests. Instead of finding answers, Rita finds herself peeling back the murky layers of decades old deceit, revealing not only the secrets of Immaculate Heart, but rattling the bones of her own family’s dysfunction.

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