Outward Signs

About the Book

This collection of seven stories suggests that sacramental power can erupt in startling ways outside the normal context: a baptism conducted in the Gulf of Mexico by a crazed evangelical; a paralyzed skier who uses her handicap to dissuade from suicide; an altar boy’s burial of the Eucharist under a Japanese maple; a religious confession at a health club; a priest clad in dubious tuxedo whose last sermon gives “unction” to a lapsed Catholic; a laicized priest called to anoint a dying woman; a young deacon pressed to “exorcise” a couple trapped in a demonic marriage. These stories confirm what Bernanos wrote in the Diary of a Country Priest: “Grace is everywhere.”

About the Author

Joseph Roccasalvo followed his graduate degrees in Philosophy, English Literature, and Theology with a Harvard Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkokm and Chicago. For ten years in New York City, he was a professor of religious studies at Fordham University's Bronx and Lincoln Center Campus. He was also visiting professor of Buddhism in Lugano, Switzerland. Now engaged in full-time teaching, he devotes himself to two alliterative loves: prose and pastoral work. A hospital chaplaincy and seven novels ensued: Fire in a Windless Place, Beyond the Pale, Chartreuse, Portrait of a Woman, The Devil's Interval, The Powers that Be, and the Odor of Sanctity. These were followed by two books of short stories, Outwards Signs and The Mansions of Limbo; a play, Waging Waugh, and a memoir, As It Were.