IN DUE SEASON: A Catholic Life

Spiritual journeys are never black and white. But often we expect them to be so. And so when we experience doubt and failure, we assume there must be something wrong with our faith, our belief, our very nature. Instead of unquestioningly bowing to authority or disaffectedly leaving the church, author Paul Wilkes demonstrates how we can live out faith in rich, fulfilling, action-packed and grace-filled ways. There is no sanitized version of our quest for God.

In the vein of engaging spiritual memoirs such as Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, IN DUE SEASON: A Catholic Life (Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint; March 2009; $24.95 / Cloth ; ISBN: 978-0-470-42333-2) by Paul Wilkes, is one man’s riveting tale of finding and losing God – over and over - and ultimately returning as a true prodigal son.

One of America’s most respected writers on religious belief and spirituality, Paul Wilkes has experienced a life of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph with dramatic milestones along the way including:

- Growing up as part of a poor, working class family and winding his way through lonely nights in a factory but working his way up to being accepted at an Ivy League school
- Finding and failing the “perfect” marriage but running from true love when it found him
- Giving up everything he owned to live with the poor while later spending summers in the Hamptons palling around with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote and Kurt Vonnegut
- Sitting at the feet of the Dalai Lama as an avowed hedonist and eventually living as a hermit at a Trappist monastery
- Becoming a true son of the Church and a sinner beyond anything he could have imagined

IN DUE SEASON is ultimately an engrossing page-turner about one man’s faith, battered and tried in the crucible of life. According to the respected Deacon Greg Kanda, it’s an “effort to show that even a ragged Catholic life can still have its moments of grace.” For the spiritually questioning Christian looking for more than a routine practice, IN DUE SEASON will inspire an honest and vital life with God.