It took me a year–365 days of scratching out words and finding precious minutes to squirrel away and become someone else on paper.
But for Paul Aubin, it took a lifetime to write this story.
Many days I felt like a voyeur–like I woke up in the morning and put on a strange pair of pants. It’s probably what an actor feels taking on the nuances of a character. At times it was a little creepy. Paul and I would sit down together poring over the manuscript and he would say, “Let me tell you about this and that, or so and so…”
And I would interrupt, “Yeah, I know Paul. I know all about you.” (cue eerie music)
His cheeks would flush. And I would move my chair a few more inches away–because internalizing a person is just plain awkward.
But the truth is, on some level, I was a priest and I was Paul the little boy and the grown man too. Every day, I racked my head to think, emote and respond like two very different men. I sat in Starbucks and wept at times as the words tumbled out. I railed at the injustice of a religious system built on a house of cards and I put myself in this heartbreaking love story destined to fail.
And over the course of that year, I fell in love with this beautiful and tragic tale of loss and redemption.
Paul’s story is the classic hero’s journey. The life he once knew crashed and burned as he is confronted with a serious health crisis. Now with a ticking clock, he is forced to search for the parent’s who abandoned him and in the process discovers a scandalous cover-up within the Catholic church in a small New England town.
This is the astonishing and true story of a man who uncovered a thirty-five-year-old secret–and only he was the missing evidence.
I encourage you to discover it for yourself.
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Paperback now available to order.
–Samantha
