An Apology For Autumn - Hardcover

Turrill, David A.

4.08

26 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592640907 ISBN 13: 9781592640904

Publisher: Toby Pr, 2004

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Jim Gudsen is just a regular guy, newly returned from the killing fields of Vietnam - cynical about life in general and religion in particular. His older brother Herkimer is different - always has been. Jim is about to find out just how different. A Lutheran minister, Herkimer is defrocked by his Church for his refusal to expel a gay couple from his conservative congregation. In the process of reevaluating his beliefs, Gudsen claims that God has spoken directly to him, and told him he must "Gather the Twelve" - and do so before his wife Megan succumbs to the ravages of cancer. Jim is cynical at first, but he is willing to try anything to save his beloved sister-in-law, and as events proceed, Jim's understanding of the world is radically changed.
The brothers are aided in their search by a college professor who is convinced that the key to unraveling the mystery of the Twelve is the ancient Greek myth of the Labors of Hercules. In an astonishing process of discovery, the brothers find their lost father, a sister immersed in the seedy underworld of porn, a former pro football player turned drug addict, and others who will help them build a church of lost souls - an ecumenical church like no other.

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About the Author:

DAVID TURRILL is a writer, teacher and theater director. He lives on a farm in Rockford, Michigan. He has two children and three grandchildren. His wife died suddenly in 1996. He is also the author of Michilimackinac and A Bridge to Eden.

In Saginaw, they knew Herkimer by name in the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital. At one time or another, over the next five years, he was a visitor there at least once annually. He dropped a pair of pruning shears on the foot that had been spared the rake and the anchor. He drove an awl through his hand while attempting to punch a hole through an old, leather belt. A cooking fork, camouflaged in dirty dishwater, found its way into his wrist. The neighbor's dog, a German Shepherd with the innocuous name of Heidi, bit his forearm to the bone when he tried to release it from the rope-leash in which it had become ensnarled. Then, of course, there was the arrow through his head. These were only a few. Even though the piercings occurred gradually over several decades and were often not (unlike the arrow) sensational, they were no less authentically and lethally relevant to the fulfillment of Herkimer's calling than the sufferings of any other martyr. It just takes some men of God a little longer to get nailed, that's all.

The remarkable thing about them, other than their frequency, is that they were all 'piercings'. I can't remember my brother ever suffering, as most of us do, from a burn, a sprain, or any cut or scratch that didn't drill a hole. I don't think that he was ever sick with the flu or ptomaine or even a cold. As Ginny and I sat with him in the emergency room during one of his innumerable visits, a young nurse who was new to Holy Cross went through a long questionnaire with him regarding his health history.

"High blood pressure?" she asked.

"No," he responded as the blood from his latest wound dripped onto the tile floor.

"Ulcers?"

"No."

"Scarlet Fever? Mumps? Chicken Pox?"

"No."

"Measles? Pneumonia?"

"No."

"Mr. Gudsen." She addressed him that way even though he was still under eighteen. "Have you ever had any illnesses?"

Herk smiled at her in that way of his, that innocent way that made you want to strangle him and love him at the same time. "I guess I've been pretty lucky," was all he said. At the time, the physician on duty was extracting a ballpoint pen from his left hand proving, in a most unique way, the inferiority of the sword.

When God spoke to him, Herk never doubted that it was the penetrating, incisive voice of authenticity. The piercings, he believed, were both preparation and fulfillment, episodes in a continual suffering that would, if you'll excuse the pun, guide Herkimer Gudsen's uniquely holy life.

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