Real Presence

Monsignor Vincent Shepherd is waiting out his death in a quiet parish in the rolling countryside of Virginia. Elderly, ill, and embittered, he has lost not only his taste for life but his faith. Then Dick Bexley and his family arrive at St. Jude's with all their belongings, refusing to be turned away. Duck Bexley is a veteran of the Korean War---once a hero, now terminally ill and desperate because he is unable to find work to support his wife and five children. Against his will Monsignor Shepherd gives the Bexleys shelter in the parish social hall. Against his will he becomes deeply involved with them as the weeks of their stay turn into months.

REAL PRESENCE is a novel about love and the crisis of faith that it precipitates for Vincent Shepherd. And it is with Bexley's wife, Elizabeth, that the old priest must come to terms---a woman who accepts life and all its tragedies fully and unwaveringly; a woman who above all can be said to love excellently, even when her husband becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy old woman.

REAL PRESENCE is a work of stunning power and simplicity and marks the debut of a talented and sophisticated novelist whose give for eloquent understatement will not fail to move his readers.