Blood and Pardon
A Novel
by
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"Be assured that if you knew all, you would pardon all." - Thomas a Kempis (c.1380-1471), Imitation of Christ.
The Reverend Jerry Flynn remained quiet and still. A Catholic priest had told him, "When I hear confession, especially of a crime, I am not present; I am an ornament on the woodwork, at most a shadow cast from another room." How much Jerry wished a screen of anonymity separated him from Amos Lightmann, or that he could vanish as it were, escape from personal contact with the sorrowful minister. But he had listened for three hours. He had heard more than he had ever wanted or had felt entitled to hear. Forgive this man of his sins? How could he? What mortal could? He had become Lightmann's listener, a precipice over which the river of this man's life had fallen. If unloading a troubled conscience had been Amos's quest, Jerry felt he had served that purpose. Now he was to become the man's intercessor. Yes, I am not here, Jerry thought to himself. I am not even a voice. I am at most a shadow cast from another room.
Leaning way forward, Jerry stretched his hands across the divide to set them firmly on Lightmann's bowed head. How cold, he thought.
"I declare to you, Amos, in the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven.
"Confession from this old and shriveled man had passed. Yet for Jerry, the burden of knowing all had just begun.
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About the Book
Twenty-one years after a bloody double homicide in 1959, Jerry Flynn, new pastor to the inner-city church of Crossriver, Pennsylvania, hears his dying predecessor confess information that could have saved the woman convicted for the crimes.
In the light of such startling evidence, Jerry ponders the likelihood that the murderer remains at large, but is conflicted over what to do with his information. Whether to betray a confidence become more complicated when Jerry's old flame, FBI agent Charlene Cunningham, comes to Crossriver to investigate a history of unsolved cases of missing women. For while Jerry and Charlene rekindle their passion and love for each other, they clash over vocational differences, which manifest themselves in the minister's right to silence and pardon all, and the law's right to know everything and provide punishing justice.
The second in a series of novels featuring Reverend Jerry Flynn, Blood and Pardon reveals the secrets of those touched by the long ago murders and probes the time-honored Christian dictum of the forgiveness of sins.
About the Author
After forty years as a pastor in New York metropolitan churches, A. C. Heldman retired with his wife to Tennessee where he devotes free time to writing adult fiction. Blood and Pardon follows The Widow's Paramour as the second of three novels reflecting the career of Reverend Jerry Flynn.