Each
Angel Burns
by Kathleen Valentine
In the latter part of the 19th century the Monastery
of St. Gabriel the Archangel was built on a cliff overlooking the
ocean on a peninsula in Maine. From its earliest days there were
rumors of strange activity there --- tunnels through the cliff
were reported to give access for smugglers, a miracle-working nun
was said to live there, and a group of drunken lumberjacks who
stormed the convent to kidnap wives claimed to have been vanquished
by a giant angel with a flaming sword. One hundred years later,
when the last of the old cloistered nuns was removed to a retirement
home, the decision was made to close and sell the convent. That's
when it was discovered that he convent's treasure, a marble statue
of the Archangel Gabriel by Italian sculptor Giovanni Dupré,
was missing.
In Ripley Mills, Massachusetts the self-titled “wild
bunch”,
who played football together back in high school, gather every
Thursday for dinner and beer. More than thirty years have passed
and the group isn't what it used to be. Charlie's new female boss
is young, pretty, and intimidating. Whitey's wife has cancer, Bull's
wife just found out about his affair with an exotic dancer, and
Vinnie can't get women to go out with him. Gabe's three daughters
have grown up and his wife is making life miserable. Peter doesn't
have those problems, he's a Jesuit priest. But they still get together
every week to drink, eat, and listen to one another's problems.
Then Father Peter makes a startling revelation, he had once been
in love with a girl he met in Paris. He planned to leave the seminary
to marry her but she rejected him to marry an older, wealthy man.
Pete is happy as a priest teaching at Boston College but now Maggie
has returned. She is leaving her husband and has purchased an old,
abandoned convent in Maine that she plans to convert to a sculpture
studio.
On Pete's recommendation Gabe takes a job helping
Maggie to restore the convent. But, as winter closes in, the mysteries
begin again. Stories are circulating about bodies of young women
washing up on the shore. Maggie's husband refuses to answer her
calls. Gabe's cantankerous father, Mick, tells him the truth about
his mother. Ethan Darling, the local sheriff, is snooping around.
Zeke, Gabe's dog, discovers a secret passage in the crypt under
the chapel. And Father Peter realizes that Maggie is falling in
love with Gabe, his oldest friend.
Each Angel Burns is the story of three people at crossroads
in their lives. It is a story of enduring friendship, of faith,
of great evil and greater love --- and of how they culminate in
a miracle. |

Who, if I cried, would hear me, of the angelic
orders? or even supposing that one should suddenly
carry me to his heart - I should perish under the pressure
of his stronger nature. For beauty is only a step
removed from a burning terror we barely sustain,
and we worship it for the graceful sublimity
with which it disdains to consume us. Each angel burns. - Ranier Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies |