Each Angel Burns

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Each Angel Burns Pub. Date: 8/1/2009 Publisher: Parlez-Moi Press

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Overview

In the latter part of the 19th century the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel was built on a cliff overlooking the ocean on a peninsula in Maine. From its earliest days there were rumors of strange activity there --- tunnels through the cliff were reported to give access for smugglers, a miracle-working nun was said to live there, and a group of drunken lumberjacks who stormed the convent to kidnap wives claimed to have been vanquished by a giant angel with a flaming spear.

One hundred years later, when the last of the old cloistered nuns was removed to a retirement home, the decision was made to close and sell the convent. That's when it was discovered that the convent's treasure, a marble statue of the Archangel Gabriel by Italian sculptor Giovanni Dupré, was missing. In Ripley Mills, Massachusetts the self-titled "wild bunch", who played football together back in high school, gather every Thursday for dinner and beer. More than thirty years have passed and the group isn't what it used to be. Charlie's new female boss is young, pretty, and intimidating. Whitey's wife has cancer, Bull's wife just found out about his affair with an exotic dancer, and Vinnie can't get women to go out with him. Gabe's three daughters have grown up and his wife is making life miserable. Peter doesn't have those problems, he's a Jesuit priest.

But they still get together every week to drink, eat, and listen to one anothers' problems. Then Father Peter makes a startling revelation, he had once been in love with a girl he met in Paris. He planned to leave the seminary to marry her but she rejected him to marry an older, wealthy man. Pete is happy as a priest teaching at Boston College but now Maggie has returned. She is leaving her husband and has purchased an old, abandoned convent in Maine that she plans to convert to a sculpture studio.

On Pete's recommendation Gabe takes the job of helping Maggie to restore the convent. But, as winter closes in, the mysteries begin again. Stories are circulating about bodies of young women washing up on the shore. Maggie's husband refuses to answer her calls. Gabe's cantankerous father, Mick, tells him the truth about his mother who had once longed to be a nun in that convent. Ethan Darling, the local sheriff, is snooping around. Zeke, Gabe's dog, discovers a secret passage in the crypt under the chapel. And Father Peter realizes that Maggie is falling in love with his oldest friend.

Each Angel Burns is the story of three people at crossroads in their lives. It is a story of enduring friendship, of faith, of great evil and greater love --- and of how they culminate in a miracle.

Who, if I cried, would hear me, of the angelic orders? or even supposing that one should suddenly carry me to his heart - I should perish under the pressure of his stronger nature. For beauty is only a step removed from a burning terror we barely sustain, and we worship it for the graceful sublimity with which it disdains to consume us. Each angel burns. - Ranier Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780978594039
Publisher: Parlez-Moi Press
Publication date: 8/1/2009
Pages: 278
Product dimensions: 0.63 (w) x 5.50 (h) x 8.50 (d)

Meet the Author

Kathleen Valentine is the author of two collections of short stories My Last Romance and other passions and love, murder, etc. as well as two novels, The Old Mermaid's Tale andEach Angel Burns. She has also written Fry Bacon, Add Onions: The Valentine Family & Friends Cookbook - five generations of good eating, a memoir/cookbook of memories and 400 recipes from a Pennsylvania Dutch childhood, and The Mermaid Shawl & other Beauties: Shawls, Cocoons and Wraps, a collection of her own lace knitting designs. She also publishes single knitting projects in a series called Knit Your Tail Off.
She currently lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, America's oldest seaport, and is writing another novel, Depraved Heart and another knitting book, Siren Shawls, Seaman's Scarves and Stories. More information on her work is at KathleenValentine.com.

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NaomiB-brn

Posted June 6, 2011

Gothic with a twist of humor!

This book was excellent. It was able to draw me in from page one, yet kept me enthralled and interested in the story throughout the book for multiple reasons. It was weird because I would call the book a noir/romance/mystery...very unusual book..it isn't your normal type of book to be "cookie cuttered" into a genre.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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MLGill

Posted May 7, 2011

more from this reviewer

Each Angel Burns is a Masterpiece!

Each Angel Burns is Valentine's second novel & is even more sophisticated and cleverly woven than her first, An Old Mermaid's Tale, which was a story I thought would be impossible to beat. I was wrong. Each Angel Burns is a masterpiece. The story begins with a wonderful introduction to a small group of middle-aged men struggling with the disappointing realities of their lives. Two of the men in this group develop as central characters in the book: Gabe is a talented craftsman with an artist's eye and heart, and Pete, the most handsome and gifted man the old mill town ever produced is a Jesuit priest teaching at nearby Boston College. Gabe is the settled-down guy who never wandered far from home; long married with three adult daughters who've flown the nest, Gabe struggles to understand how his marriage turned into a meat locker. Valentine's ability to sketch out a marriage turned as cold as dry ice and just as caustic is astonishing. Gabe's wife is a woman seething with slowly fermented husband-hate, a hate whose seeds were planted long ago when she married Gabe, knowing full well she didn't love him. Gabe is excruciatingly unaware that the defect in his marriage is not anything he can correct. Father Pete is married too but his spouse, Holy Mother Church, is a more demanding lover than any earthly wife. Pete has been a good priest - a faithful and loving spouse - but when the only woman he ever loved, Maggie, reappears in his life he, like Gabe, is suddenly faced with his own middle-aged marital crisis. Maggie, named after The Magdalene, is married to a man of great wealth and even greater malevolence and after years of abuse Maggie has finally found a way to break free. Her husband, Sinclair, has given her the strange gift of a deconsecrated convent built on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Maggie is determined to return the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel to its old glory and as she works to regenerate the mysterious convent it begins to regenerate her. Maggie's hunt for the famous and long-lost statue of Gabriel the Archangel that was said to miraculously guard the convent door leads her to an expert on the subject at Boston College. and back into the life of Fr. Peter Black, the man she loved but walked out on many years before. The Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel becomes ground zero in a Manichean battle for the hearts and souls - and lives - of all three of heaven's namesakes: Gabe, named after St. Gabriel, the patron saint of priests; Peter, the rock upon whom Christ built His church; and the Magdalene, one of the most misunderstood and maligned women in Scripture, the woman of sin with the purest of hearts. Maggie's malevolent husband is the Devil's own handiwork; he is a creature of unimaginable evil able to destroy all three as surely as he has destroyed many others. Gabriel the Archangel, however, is determined to deny the Devil his victory. EAB is sexy & sophisticated and Valentine delivers a few shockaroos that are completely unpredictable. The ending is suspenseful, original, and satisfying. A 5-Star read! Maureen Gill Author of January Moon

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Each Angel Burns

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More About This Book

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Product Details

Meet the Author

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Gothic with a twist of humor!

Each Angel Burns is a Masterpiece!