In Due Season

Paul Wilkes wanted to be like social justice advocate Dorothy Day, and spend his life with the poor. He wanted to be like Thomas Merton, and spend his life behind monastery walls in prayer. He failed on both accounts. He only became himself.

One of America's most respected writers on religious belief and spirituality, Paul Wilkes's search for God begins in a poor, working class family in Cleveland and winds through lonely nights in a factory, working his way through college; a surprising confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis; a torrid romance on the Indian Ocean; acceptance into an Ivy League school; and into the "perfect" marriage, which would fail.

A man who seemingly had everything, one day he took scripture literally and gave up everything he owned to live with the poor. But then, in a dizzying turnabout, he became a person he eventually could no longer recognize in the mirror. He spent his summers in the Hamptons and lived the life of the man about town—single, facile, popular, hollow. He knew Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and Kurt Vonnegut, but not himself. He sat at the feet of the Dalai Lama. He was an avowed hedonist. He lived as a hermit at a Trappist monastery. He found true love and ran from it. He was a true son of the Church and a sinner beyond anything he might have imagined.

Paul Wilkes' life is one of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph, with a faith in God battered and tried in the crucible of his life.