The Unspeakable: A Novel

The book would make a good movie. It is the period of the Vietnam war and some of the resulting instabilities have affected the students at a Catholic seminary near Decorah, Iowa. An approximately eight year attempt by a priest, Marbury, to feed the hungry, house the homeless has left him on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Traveling in Pennsylvania he experiences a sort of epiphany, emerging without a voice, but with the power to heal. A church investigator, Peter Whitmore, a fellow seminarian twenty years earlier, undertakes an investigation for the Bishop. Marbury is about to be defrocked, it would seem. The story concerns moral obtuseness and spiritual blessedness in a mix of past and future events in the parallel routes of the investigator and the investigated. The condition of muteness underlies the theme of indeterminancy comprising the plot.

Calia is a masterful wordsmith. Admittedly, however, this work is not meant for all (therefore may not become overly popular) Its profundity may not be picked up by readers who have not witnessed or experienced some of the internal conflicts and reconciliations presented through the characters of Marbury and Whitmore. Like Wagner's "Ring", I predict we'll find many subtle and interlacing themes, barely connectable by readers who look only for the obvious in writing, but there for those that don't, in future works by this writer.