Just Published by Quinpinnacles Press
The Zealot
Book one of the Anvil Trilogy
a novel by R. LeRoy Green
Paperback: 408 pages
Quinpinnacles Press (Sept. 30, 2019)
ISBN 13: 978-1-947415-00-3
Price: U.S $16.95
When your most deeply held
convictions come into conflict,
they can tear you apart . . . .
The Zealot, a debut novel by career journalist R. LeRoy Green, is a story of faith challenged—a powerful psychological drama to which anyone can relate who has ever become disenchanted with a creed, a cult, an ideology, an organization, or an individual once held in high regard.
Calen Woodridge is a young missionary born in the faith and steeped in the rigid doctrines of his church—including the proclamation that its leaders spoke for God and were to be obeyed. Gifted and zealous, Calen seemed destined for a rapid rise to leadership until false rumors of misconduct reached the mission prelate. Without giving Calen a hearing, Prelate Garvey demoted him.
Dazed but undeterred and even more determined to make his mission a success, Calen worked to regain his unjustly tarnished reputation. Then a new prelate arrived who was quick to assume the worst about him.
When Calen refused to go along with other missionaries in his group on an excursion that was in direct violation of church policy, he was shocked by the new prelate’s reaction. Rather than commend him, Prelate Boyden made unfounded assumptions, censured him, refused to allow discussion, and reassigned him to mundane tasks at mission headquarters where he could be watched and kept out of trouble.
But Calen’s troubles continued to compound, his clashes with Boyden escalated, and his spiritual anguish intensified.
Upon facing a difficult personal decision, Calen made the decision prayerfully and acted as he believed the Spirit directed. But Boyden was outraged. He impugned Calen’s motives, questioned his devotion, and demanded that he recant or be sent home in disgrace.
How was it possible, Calen wondered, that a church leader could command him in the name of God to disobey the Spirit of God?
Which directive would Calen obey?
Could his faith survive the dilema?
And would he ever be able to face his family and friends again?
Coming Soon from Quinpinnacles Press
The Magnesium Ribbon
Book Two of the Anvil Trilogy
a novel by R. LeRoy Green
Author of The Zealot
CALEN AWOKE with an excruciating headache, a wrenching pain in his gut, and an overpowering nausea.
It was dark. Pitch dark. He was lying on his right side, right arm outstretched, his face against a cold, damp, gritty surface with a putrid smell. He was shivering uncontrollably.
For an instant, he could not remember where he was. His mind was foggy, numb. He tried to sit up, but a stabbing pain shot from his right shoulder to the tips of his fingers, and another from the base of his skull down the back of his neck. He collapsed again onto the filthy surface beneath him.
With his left hand, he felt the bed on which he was lying found it to be bare earth covered with a thin layer of moldy straw. Now I remember, he thought. I’m in solitary. They tried to beat it out of me again—a confession. A repudiation of my faith. Again I told them no. They must have beat me until I passed out and then dragged me back in here.
It was getting old. How many different times he had been interrogated, he had lost count. How many different techniques had they tried in an effort to break him? How many different places he had been locked up in since his arrest? How long had it been now? Months, maybe years. He could not even be sure how long he had been confined in this tiny windowless concrete cell with an earthen floor and no furnishings—not even a cot. He could not tell day from night, and at times he would be left alone for extended periods without anyone coming to bring food or to empty the small clay chamber pot, both of which were passed through a shallow opening at the bottom of a heavy wooden door.
It must be getting old for his captors, too, he though. No matter how hard they tried, they had gotten nowhere.
At least not yet.
But how much longer could he hold out? How many more months or years could he endure the filth, the degradation, the deprivation, the relentless physical and psychological agony, when there seemed no end in sight, no hope of rescue or escape? When with the stroke of a pen, he could bring his suffering to an end and purchase his freedom.
Calen rolled over onto his back and looked up at the darkness. He closed his eyes and saw the faces of his wife, Ciara, and his two beautiful daughters, Sonata and Rhapsody. He felt his daughters’ arms around his neck as they said goodbye him. He felt Ciara’s lips against his. And the longing seemed unbearable.
Soon to be released by Quinpinnacles Press
The Caverns of Casnitania
Book one of the Aspirian Trilogy
a faith sci-fi novel by R. LeRoy Green
author of The Zealot
THE CAVERNS OF CASNITANIA, volume one in the Aspirian Trilogy, is a science fiction novel set on the distant three-mooned planet of Aquaterra, a world of vast archipelagos and harsh weather extremes whose inhabitants, although they have had no contact with Earth, are nonetheless distinctly human both in form and in temperament.
As on Earth, different societies have developed, each with their own cultures, institutions, and beliefs. The most powerful and most technologically advanced is the Sovereign Empire of the Great Central Archipelago, commonly called CenArc, whose scientists and engineers are leading an early machine-age industrial revolution.
Dominating CenArc are the Casnitanian people, most of whom live in primitive caves and caverns or in sophisticated excavations in the hardrock mountains of Casnitania, the largest island in the archipelago. The emperor enforces a state religion upon his subjects which teaches that only Casnitanians were created by The Great Maker and all other peoples were made by lesser gods.
But Therranon, an advanced engineering student, has always been skeptical of the teaching, and after visiting an ancient religious shrine, he has reasons to suspect that the original Casnitanian religion had been deliberately corrupted by the early emperors in order to control the population and justify imperial expansion.
When Therranon meets and falls in love with a foreign diplomat’s daughter, Chelandria, the state religion’s anti-miscegenation laws become a personal issue for him. The covert assasination of Chelandria’s father further complicates matters, and Therranon embarks on a dangerous quest to learn who was behind the murder and why. What he discovers has dire ramifications far beyond anything he could have imagined.