Norman's Assault
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Father Tom Murray, at 87 years old, was the senior member of the Gonzaga faculty. The saintly, snowy-haired old Jesuit was loved and respected by students and colleagues alike. The lenses on Father Tom’s glasses magnified his eyes to the size of billiard balls. Norm suspected it was the priest’s powerful memory, and not the glasses, that enabled him to keep on teaching. While struggling through Father Tom’s Latin class, he enjoyed his teacher’s digressions into areas of theology and cosmology.
The kindly old priest began one such session with, “Laddies, I want to engage in a thought experiment with you. It is a clear night and you observe hundreds of stars in the sky overhead. You focus on one of them. Would you bet your life against a thousand dollars that you were looking at a star?” Only a few of Norm’s classmates indicated that they would take the bet. Most, like Norm, reasoned that, while unlikely, they might be looking at a planet or some other body. Father Murray concurred with the majority, noting, “Sometimes seeing is not believing.” He then continued: “Now, laddies, in your mind’s eye, I want you to look up again. This time I want you to focus on a small patch of sky where no stars are visible. Would you bet your life that, while unseen, stars are present in this region?” Norm was the only one willing to take the bet. The priest looked at Norm and spoke, “Laddie, you should never risk your life for money; it is far too precious for that.” Norm cast his eyes downward as his classmates chuckled, congratulating themselves on their wisdom. The old priest approached Norm and said, “Don’t be embarrassed, Master Beech. Unseen stars or their unseen Creator, you alone have realized that believing is seeing. Your belief may someday net you something infinitely more valuable than money.”
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About the Book
Norman D Beech enters the world on D-Day just as the mighty Allied armada is landing on the shore an ocean away. He is marked at birth as different from others, a sign of divinely infused belief conflicted by a compelling bias toward self-indulgence. George Beech, moderate in all things except his unlimited love for his firstborn, is later rewarded with insolence, rebellion, and estrangement.
Penitent, Norman seeks forgiveness from his earthly father, only to find him hopelessly lost in the miasma of Alzheimer’s. He fights on, searching for love, knowledge, and God, while risking everything to the demons of selfishness, drunkenness, and despair. Teetering on the brink of extinction, he is driven by unseen forces to a final showdown at the Last Chance Saloon.
About the Author
Nicholas D. Brown was born in 1942 in