For Theirs is the Kingdom
In the midst of the lost and the destitute...
For Theirs is the Kingdom
For Theirs is the Kingdom is an urban tale about a young Boston lawyer who unexpectedly meets a renegade street priest and former tribal shaman. Unwittingly drawn into the world of the church, which he had learned to disregard—with its manifest hypocrisies, financial ambitions, and evident irrelevance—narrator, Ben Cabot, embarks on an unexpected spiritual journey, paradoxically confronting the church’s nemesis: “Cathedral in the Night.” In the midst of the lost and the destitute, and his own entitled life, he encounters a renegade wisdom more real than any he had ever known.
Drawing on historical fact and experiences as a priest, in his first novel, Carlisle compellingly writes about what he knows. The drama is based on an unprecedented multimillion-dollar building project that actually took place in the 1980s underneath his grandfather’s cathedral. Integrity and greed, despair and hope, and the subversive possibility of God, all serve to inspire ultimate questions in this increasingly bankrupt time.
Reviews
What people are saying about Pickett's Dream...
Here is a novel that will stick with you long after you’ve read it. Carlisle writes about worlds he knows… asking the quintessential questions about life’s meaning and offering, among the witty and charged exchanges, a wealth of profound answers for the reader to ponder.
Paul Mariani
Poet, Author, Professor,
and National Book Award finalist
Beautifully written and engaging, For Theirs is the Kingdom tells a story of unadorned Christianity. Jeans, not collars. Feeding the poor. Housing the homeless. Christianity on the streets, in the manner of Jesus.
Barry Moser
American Book Award-winning illustrator
of The Pennyroyal Caxton Bible,
Alice in Wonderland, and A River Runs Through It
Carlisle elegantly and evocatively describes the rarified world of Ben Cabot, a peripatetic Boston Brahmin who, like the great Montreal cathedral at the center of his tale, loses the ground under his feet. Amid wood-paneled walls, fine scotches, and expensive toys, Cabot slowly disassembles his spiritually burdened, privileged life. Carlisle offers his readers delicate meditations on interconnected themes, distributing his story into chapters reminiscent of Chopin’s études. We glimpse faith in search of acts, privilege in search of duty, artifice in search of beauty, and ambition in search of purpose. Carlisle’s timely and important book helps to frame today’s social upheavals.
Stephen Harris
Professor of English,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
A personal story of a young American thrown into the world of jealousy and greed in the Episcopal Church. Riveting, painful, and brilliant!
David Staines
Professor of English at the University of Ottawa,
Literary critic, writer, editor,
and member of the Order of Ottawa and the Order of Canada
