The battered but saintly hero of Paradise Atop the Hudson meets his soulmate, a Polish immigrant boy who views him as a messenger from God. A venerable priest engineers the inconceivable by placing a seemingly irredeemable juvenile delinquent with the family he has wronged, changing the course of several lives in the process. A resentful son wrests control of the family from his ailing father and launches a conspiracy against his fraternal rival that culminates in violence which scars all concerned. Three manipulative women ply their craft: one with Lady Macbeth bravado, another with staunch love, and a third with a fiery temper stoked by prejudice. Medical traumas – including a heart attack, a stroke, a loss of vision, and multiple struggles with addiction and PTSD – are counterbalanced by the joys and underlying lessons of the rapidly changing cultural tapestry of the 1970s, brimming with iconic pop songs, movies, books, and community rituals of the period, but especially with the colorful and unforgettable people who shaped the times and were ultimately shaped by them. A Rolling Stones concert, a Yankees/Orioles game, the Bicentennial celebrations, and the election of Pope John Paul II are just a few of the historic events vividly recalled, but many others less widely known prove equally memorable and influential. Irish Jesus of Fairview, the follow-up to the critically-praised and sales-successful Paradise Atop the Hudson, goes in directions few would have predicted, as it explores the conflicts between ethnic pride and personal reinvention, gender identity and social intolerance, and the power of faith versus the worst temptations and abuses. All this and more plays out in the beloved but quickly fading terrain of Fairview, New Jersey, which is captured as if in a time capsule, to endure after all that it was and represented has been lost. - Bill Kamberger, Editor,
Irish Jesus of Fairview