Dan Gilman's faith in the Church and his strong bond with his staunchly Catholic family lead him to believe a priest's claim that he will make Dan walk again after he is paralyzed in a 1972 diving accident. The priest, Father Edward Paquette, is not a miracle worker, but a pedophile dismissed from churches in Massachusetts and Indiana for molesting young boys. Protected by the Church, who considers him a risk worth taking, Paquette is passed on from parish to parish until he lands at Christ the King Church in Rutland, Vermont only weeks before Dan's accident Sometimes heartbreaking, often inspiring, Dan Gilman's frank and compelling memoir is a trek across the highs and lows of the life of a quadriplegic who struggles with memories of his exploitation at the hands of the man whom he believed spoke for God.

Beginning as an account of bereavement told by a 19-year old war widow, The Hummingbird War soars into a tale of the ultimate price paid by soldiers, their families, and the deeply-divided nation during the Vietnam War. Amid the tumultuous year of 1968, Diane Hayes tells the story of how she risked everything to end the war - the war overseas, the war at home, and the war within her heart. After her Navy pilot husband's jet is shot down, shy and deferential Diane moves from her island home to attend college. When she takes a job for the university's SDS chapter, she discovers more than political unrest in her heart and she is forced to choose between a past she does not want to abandon and an uncertain future.

Jack Tallarico may be Connecticut's 1970 champion high school baseball player, but he feels like the world's biggest imposter. Each time he steps up to bat, he prays he can hit his shame out of his life. He finds a reprieve from his family's disgrace by excelling in sports while his twin brother, Kerry, hides his anguish working beneath the hoods of broken-down cars. When Jack meets Paula, the girl who offers the future he believes will save him, they fall in love while Kerry secretly covets her. After Jack and Paula marry and Jack's career in professional baseball takes off, Kerry goes to fight in Vietnam, and trouble for all of them isn't far behind for all of them. Fortunate Son runs the bases of compassion and growth and solidarity in family, and Jack's maturity, in the face of the toughest odds, proves the answers to our prayers lie within us and the power to change is divine.