Jean Parapet

Walk Through the Ruins Jean Parapet

A bad storm ripped through the Fog Creek Abbey in Oklahoma a few years ago. It claimed the life of the Abbey's de facto groundskeeper, a layman named Abner Strand. He had lived in a shack outside the walls for over 40 years, at the mercy of the monks inside. When they went outside the walls to clean up the ruins of his shack left by the storm, they found the first draft of a manuscript inside... Abner's spiritual memoir. He'd been told to write it by the Abbot himself, though few knew of the project. They took the papers to the Abbot, who, after reading it, sent for a Franciscan brother to investigate some of the claims made inside. If they were true, they might just change the public understanding of recent events. Abner claimed to have known and been involved politically with Solomon Holcombe in his younger days. Solomon raised a daughter, Mary Holcombe. Mary was the architect of the so-called "Sanctity of Life Amendments" to the U. S. Constitution, which had kickstarted the Second American Civil War, now on the verge of ending. She had been missing since the start of the war. If Abner was telling the truth, the country might need to read what the Abbot just had, and they might need a strong stomach. It is a brutal tale of suffering and loneliness told by a dying man who may have been losing his mind, and who was questioning everything he had ever believed. His story is not for the faint of heart. It is for those who love justice and truth, and who understand that this world is a fallen one. Walk Through the Ruins is, at its heart, a protest novel motivated by an interest in promoting human dignity by defending that which is good, true, and beautiful.