In Shepherd's Clothing: A Dance With the Devil

A teenage boy named Frank Crosby searches frantically for his four-year-old baby sister in a crowded shopping mall on Christmas Eve, not knowing that she is already dead, brutally murdered seconds after her hand had slipped out of his. Fourteen years later, the redemption he seeks in priesthood eludes him until a stranger, a beautiful but desperate young woman appears at his rectory doorstep, pursued by a powerful United States senator who wants her dead. Committed to protecting her at all costs, Crosby soon discovers that the deadliest adversary he will face is not one who wields immense power from a lofty seat of government, but another who sits on a throne as a virtually invincible cardinal prince of the Roman Catholic Church. By definition, romantic suspense might not be thought of as the typical framework for tackling delicate subject matter pertaining to the misdeeds of religious institutions, especially when the institution in question is the most powerful of its kind on earth. IN SHEPHERD’S CLOTHING - A Dance With The Devil, is an artful exception that draws upon the Vatican’s long recorded history of prevarication and intrigue to create a wrapper for the fiction genre. Woven into this fascinating story of romance and suspense is the scandalous sexual misconduct among the Church’s priests and its oppression of women seeking an equal voice. It further challenges the Church’s sacrosanct canons pertaining to matters like priesthood, the Eucharist, and papal infallibility. By portraying a scenario in which a giant religious enterprise creates the formula for its own disaster, IN SHEPHERD’S CLOTHING begs the question of whether the gates of hell can indeed prevail against an institution thought to be impervious to the perils of prejudice and corruption.”