Blessed Memorial

Too secular for church, too much Holy Spirit for polite conversation.If they'd lived in our times, the rich young man in the Bible and Mary Magdalene might have gone to high school together. *****At a flea market one Saturday morning, Thomas Strongtree, a retired woodworker, buys a pack of police-arrest fingerprint cards and mug shots for teenagers detained during the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. As a man who always followed the rules and now battles creeping regret in his later years, Strongtree wonders how their lives may have differed from his own. The "youthful offenders" would now be adults, and he wants to meet them. A lawyer warns Strongtree the project could be dangerous. "If one of those guys turns out to be a judge or a minister, you'd be looking at a world of hurt for the rest of your life." Strongtree does it anyway, and as he talks to the young people, now adults, he hears life stories that echo and expand upon the great parables of the Bible. When his activities threaten to drop him into a legal hornet's nest, he uses knowledge gleaned from a wise police patrolman who resembles the Bible's rich young man and touched all of the young people's lives.From a meeting with a school superintendent in New Jersey to an unforgettable conversation one afternoon and evening on Lake Chautauqua to an encounter with an eighty-one-year-old woman aerospace engineer, this book will leave readers reflecting on their own struggles, triumphs, regrets, and joys as they journey alongside Strongtree on his exceptional quest.

-- Paul Martin