Deacon's Winter

Deacon Adelius has just reluctantly ushered a dozen homeless people out of Saint Sebastian's Catholic Church in Chicago when he notices a light illuminated above a confessional chamber. When he opens the door, he is shocked to find a badly beaten woman slumped in the priest's chair. He leads her to the safety of his sitting room and searches her purse for identification-finding only a Bible, a strange key, and a loaded gun. Adelius thinks he is helping a woman in trouble. He has no idea that he has just been drawn into a dangerous world of blackmail, murder, and political corruption.

Two men crash through the door and shoot the woman and the deacon, and Adelius wakes up in the hospital, disoriented and suspected of murdering the woman whose body has just been found floating in the river. Left with only the woman's Bible, the key, and a series of clues, Adelius begins a search for the truth, relying on his connections with street people, the secret society of Gabrians, and his inner circle to clear his name. Worse yet, he must now attempt to find an assassin during the worst snowstorm of the century, before a cardinal loses his life and Adelius loses the woman he loves.

In this action-packed thriller, a Catholic deacon must risk everything in order to save a life-and a soul-before it is too late.