Father Flanagan Laments A Satirical Novel [Paperback]

Meet Father Emery Flanagan, Parish Priest at COHA (Church of the Holy Assumption), torn between his intense love of God and the intrusive demands of the flesh, and frazzled by the insistent needs of his congregation and his churchly duties. Increasingly frantic, he records his riotous daily struggles in letters to his Bishop and in his diary. Here he describes his raucous interactions with a cast of characters ranging from his ancient, wrecked Sexton, who keeps him going with toddies and loyal support, to Emily Claypeter, whom he pursues in unrequited love, and his rigid, throwback co-Pastor Reverend Johan Wagner. Here too he conveys his visions of himself either sitting beside the Heavenly Throne, or falling into the fiery pit of hell. When Eric Purer, the richest man in town, asks Emery to tutor his lovely daughter, Sally, temptations mount. His life begins to sink and crumble like COHA's foundation, itself, which church engineers tell him is sinking into the ground. He unravels at an ever increasing pace until one night he finds himself standing naked, holding aloft his ten foot, custom made wooden cross, high above the town in COHA's bell tower. In this Rabelaisian satire of religious and sexual mores, we follow the struggles of an all-to-human man of the cloth, as he grapples with his inner demons and the hypocrisies of church and community.