Patience Of A Saint

Description for PATIENCE OF A SAINT by Andrew M Greeley:

This is the story of Red Kane, a man caught in a dilemma of love. After twenty years of marriage plagued by misunderstanding and bitter resignation, Red finds himself falling in love with his wife all over again---and at the same time, pursued by an implacable, attractive God.

Redmond P. Kane, a popular Chicago newspaper columnist and Pulitzer prize winner, smokes and drinks too much, neglects his kids, enjoys a mistress, is feared and hated by his colleagues, and has shared nothing but a bed with his wife for much too long. At fifty-three, Red is an unhappy, disgruntled cynic. But soon, all that changes. On a Chicago street corner a speeding car almost runs him down, and a moment of divine grace---one in which God and Red's green-eyed wife are somehow identified with each other---almost knocks him unconscious. And then Red's real troubles begin...

They start with evil---plain, old-fashioned wickedness in the person of aging politico Harv Gunther. Red has come up with evidence that links Gunther to the disappearance of a newsman twenty years earlier and the recent murder of a teenage girl, but proving it can cost Kane his career. He's almost ready to close his files, go out for a drink, and forget it all. Yet since his brush with death, Red finds himself inexorably drawn down the path of saintliness and driven to always "do the right thing."

Being a good husband to his wife Eileen is at the top of Red's list. Without realizing it, he's whistling "You're Irish and You're Beautiful"---and dreaming of going home, taking her in his arms, and making up for all the sins of omission accumulated over twenty years of their on-again, off-again marriage. But what happens when he does? Beautiful Irish Eileen thinks he's having a breakdown, just as his newsroom co-workers are sure he's finally gone over the edge. Soon a psychiatrist is trying to have him committed. God has turned Red's whole existence upside down. Must he choose between his wife and his God? Or have they joined in a plot to try the patience of a saint?

As Red probes the depths of his new emotions and renewed commitments with the help of Msgr. Blackie Ryan, he also digs into the dirty business of Harv Gunther and int he process gravely endangers the lives of everyone he loves.