American Apocrypha is a series of fictional short stories with a Catholic perspective published through Quarry Slave Books. The stories take place in different time periods and places but are threaded together by a common theme, the nature of humanity in relation to good and evil and the places we come to as a result of our choices. The titles below will be available the summer of 2023. Proceeds from the sales of these stories go toward the Painting the Rosary Project.
A Serpent Sings in the Desert
A shadowy figure emerges from the desert and finds his way to a cantina in Santa Fe New Mexico in the early 1600’s. As he adjusts to this new world, he encounters a young woman and transports her to a beautiful place where she finds loved ones and memories long past. But these visions soon transform into horrifying visions of a future world. When this world threatens to consume her, a young boy appears and returns her to her home. The boy and the man deliberate on their place and responsibility in God’s creation. The man seeks a way into another place where he is in control. The boy warns him to seek forgiveness before it’s too late.
Their Eyes Were the Color of the Sun
Tom Horning is retiring after thirty-five years as sheriff of Denver. On the same day he receives a note informing him that Luis Rojas is alive, a man who killed a young girl when Horning was a young deputy. The memory of that day has haunted him his entire career and forced him to face a painful truth, that Rojas’ escape, was all his fault. His son writes to him from Chicago asking him to come visit and meet his first grandchild, but Horning sets out to Juarez to make good on an oath that will forever alter the course of his life.
Gallery of the Forsaken
Harold Guidry has constructed a barricade around de Zurbarán’s Crucifix painting at the Art Institute where he has worked as a guard for over 30 years. Society has collapsed and the world is overrun with lawlessness and destruction. For the better part of a year, he has watched over this work with his old dog Knock protecting it from looters and rioters, but Guidry is running low on supplies. Late one night a stranger arrives at the museum and Guidry is taken on a tour of his own life.
Our Lady of the Red Sun
A man awakens from 800 years in stasis. In his dazed state he recalls past lives, fighting for the Byzantine Empire, leading troops into Germany in World War II, crushing an uprising on Titan. Now, 12,000 years in the future, his ship speeds toward the Dolorem Star System and a sun soon to go supernova. The ship’s artificial intelligence reports several contacts with a human apparition during his sleep. When the apparition returns, he is confronted by the memories of his past and his true identity.