The God of Shattered Glass

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Where does one find hope in the midst of profound suffering? Tony Backman aches to know. A blues-harmonica-playing child psychologist at a residential treatment center in Santa Rosa, California, Tony specializes in narrative therapy. His story-based technique empowers abused teenagers to reimagine their lives through myths and folktales and so restore their vitality. Such vitality, however, eludes Tony in his own life. Mired in depression, he longs for his fractured family and fends off childhood flashbacks too painful to face. Tony's mentor recommends classical underworld myths as a roadmap for the spiritual journey toward healing and hope, but Tony is too drained for the undertaking. Until Carey Foster enters his life. Carey is a golden-voiced eleven-year-old choral soloist at a local Catholic boys' home. Brought to Tony's treatment center with his wrists sliced, Carey cowers mutely with his secrets in the center's locked ward, a flicking middle finger his only beacon. Carey's healing depends on Tony's ability to navigate the labyrinth of deception and cryptic self-disclosure that conceals the soul's darkest secrets. It also depends upon Tony's willingness to navigate the labyrinth of love and disappointment lodged in his own soul. At once a psychological study of how trauma is healed; a hero's journey through the underworld of abuse, betrayal, and shattered faith; and a theological thriller in search of a credible and sustaining Sacred in the midst of unspeakable suffering, The God of Shattered Glass reveals that stories do indeed heal, and that the way to God is not up, but down.

Frank Rogers is Professor of Spiritual Formation and Narrative Pedagogy at the Claremont School of Theology. As a narrative educator and spiritual director, he works with marginalized young people and adult survivors of childhood abuse, using story as a means of personal healing and social empowerment. Their stories, and his, inform this novel. Frank lives in Southern California where he runs in the foothills and hikes in the mountains. This is his first novel, and the first of a planned trilogy.