Award-winning Canadian author of What Disturbs Our Blood, James Fitzgerald, says of Grace Ungiven: “…a well-crafted labour of love and conscience.” A tragic story uncovers the depths of dysfunction in the Catholic Church. How can a story about a man trying to bring an abusive priest to justice reveal truth about the Catholic clerical child sexual abuse crisis? Grace Ungiven, based on extensive research and over 100 in-depth interviews with Catholics from all walks of life, achieves this. It is, essentially, a fictional account of fact. Seventeen years ago, as an altar boy, Mickey Kavanaugh was sexually abused by his priest and went into self-imposed exile. He is broken, psychologically scarred and suffering ever since. Starting a victim support website for some measure of healing, he found another victim on the site abused by the same priest, around the same time and place, with DNA evidence he still holds. Mickey returns home on a desperate quest for justice and redemption, rounding up some old friends to make the case stick. In this time of social conscience, activism and advocacy, what of justice for these children? With a fascinating blend of original storytelling and raw truth, Grace Ungiven delivers an unvarnished yet sensitive treatment of this ongoing crisis in a fast-paced tale of intrigue, romance, sex and crime. Read it with compassion for what is happening to these children, and finish it knowing why.

The prequel novella to the new climate-fiction novel The Dying Party. The Dying Party asks: What happens when they tell us it's too late, when we pass the tipping point of the climate change crisis and are forced to face a near future that will be increasingly hellish, and the end that will come within our lifetimes? The novel answers this with two two parallel story lines. On the one hand, we have six survivors in 2049, in a residential complex built into Newfoundland’s only mountain, Gros Morne - the last six people alive in Eastern Canada. On the other hand, we have a group of humanity's richest and most powerful, the super-elite, trying to establish an off-Earth colony for themselves. The novel shows in fascinating detail the complex brutality of what having to accept such a fate would mean for the social, political, and economic principles and structures that underpin human civilization; what it would look like on a global scale, in a local context, and from a variety of distinct personal perspectives.The Dying Party demonstrates that the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the cause of so much injustice and suffering through history, will plague us on into the fateful future we now face. The thrust of the novel, however, is to illustrate the under-appreciated impact that passing the climate change tipping point will have on the human psyche – an impact as great as that of climate change on the planet, accelerating the deadly advance. This is not fanciful speculation about the near and distant future, but rather the logical extension of the current course of humanity based on extensive research. The novel has the courage to depict the worse case scenario unflinchingly, that we may see the human consequences of unchecked climate change. It is, therefore, the cautionary tale to end all cautionary tales.

“The Dying Party”, along with its prequel novella “Two of All People” (free and available everywhere), asks the question: ‘What happens when they tell us it's too late to stop climate change; when we are forced to face a future that will be increasingly hellish, and an horrific end that will come within our lifetimes?’ The novel answers this question with two parallel story lines that alternate from chapter to chapter and eventually merge – one about how the poor will deal with the advancing crisis, and one about how the rich and powerful will fare. The former story line, starting a few years earlier in the prequel, focuses on two main characters. It is late in the 2040s, and Lizzie and Donnie are two of only six people left alive in a residential complex that had been built into the side of Newfoundland’s Gros Morne mountain in the 2030s, now the only piece of habitable land left above water in all of what was once eastern Canada. In the second story line we follow a group of humanity's richest and most powerful, the super-elite, as they try to establish an off-Earth colony for themselves. “The Dying Party” explores in fascinating detail the complex brutality of what having to accept such a fate would mean for human civilization; what it would look like on a global scale, a local context, and from a variety of personal perspectives. The author’s extensive research shows that if we stay on our present course of inaction, confusion, and complacency, such a declaration will come sooner than we think. The thrust of the novel, however, is to illustrate the under-appreciated impact that passing the climate change tipping point will have on the human psyche; an impact that will further complicate and accelerate what is happening on a number of levels. This is not fanciful speculation about the near and distant future, but rather the logical extension of the current course of humanity if we fail to up our game. The novel is a courageous, unflinchingly depiction of the worst-case scenario, with a measure of redemption, and is therefore a cautionary tale to end all cautionary tales.