Stained Glass

Flickr Photo by Limbo Poet

In my next novel, Stained Glass, a 50s-something reporter, who has been jaded by overexposure to media hype and is cynical about every aspect of his wretched life, is given an assignment by his aging mother to complete the memoir of his great-great-grandfather Christopher Dryden. In the early 1870s Christopher had been sent on a mission to the boisterous Gold Rush town of Barkerville, BC, where a fund-raising campaign to install a stained glass window behind the alter of St. Saviour's Anglican Church turned into a heated controversy when it was revealed that an anonymous donor, who was covering most of the cost was none other than the owner of the town's most notorious brothel, Madame Blavinsky.

Excerpts from Stained Glass, and discussions about the work-in-progress, will be published from time to time on this blog. I should note that this novel is not among the genre that blames Christianity and Victorianism for all the world's current ills. On the contrary, it explores what we have lost by abandoning wholesale the deeper spiritual and moral values of an era whose deep and abiding flaws have been replaced in many instances by an utter vacuum.

Relevant entries can be accessed through the Stained Glass tag.