Angel Through The Storms

Riveting, multilayered - Angel Through The Storms delves into the loveless realities of child abuse and molestation; it illustrates the mass abandonment experienced by refugees suffering and dying on the sweltering streets of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; it depicts the psychological and spiritual travesties that result; it offers up hope and healing through a love too rare for any ordinary human to share; it births angels through the storms. THE MAIN CHARACTERS Claude Parrish, nicknamed "Sinker," is the villain, the evil archetype, a six-foot-four brute with beady brown eyes and a beer gut that curls over the waistline of his jeans. He embodies and manifests the sins of our fathers perpetuating through the generations. He represents the heartlessness in our world. He rapes us of our childhood innocence, leaving us wounded and less able to manifest our divine potential. His wife Cecelia is a typical battered woman. Her mother never loved her; her father abandoned her. She has no concept of what real love is, yet she is desperate for it. So insecure is she that she not only puts up with Sinker's abuse, but turns a blind eye when he molests their daughter. Lola, their daughter, is a petite intuitive, an introvert who represents our childhood innocence. Her initiation into the world of humans occurs in an isolated environment where abuse reigns. Its natural consequence - PTSD. During moments of crisis, she intuitively seeks safe haven from the insanity of her world by the only way she knows - psychological dissociation. She dives deeply into the inner realms of consciousness, an escape mechanism that has the potential to disintegrate her self-identity and leave her catatonic for life. The question is - can she ever re-integrate? If so, what will that look like? Helen and Jack Cooghan are New Orleans landlords for Lola and her only friend, Corrine. Middle class and retired, they assume the role of surrogate parents for their childlike, pregnant tenant, Lola. She seems so vulnerable. Worried about her, they seek guidance from their priest, Father MacDonald. Father MacDonald represents wisdom, awakened by his first encounter with Grover, Lola's infant. He serves as a credible witness to the events of the story as they unfold. Father Alphonse, Father MacDonald's longtime close friend, is accused of sexually abusing altar boys early in his priesthood. Like Sinker, he represents the sins of our fathers, but on a level that violates the most sacred of trusts. Despite his repentance, his abhorrent acts have set the wheels of ruin in motion. Truman the psychic is a huge man, tall and weighing over 300 pounds. His large moon face expresses a contentment Lola understands and responds to as she serves him at the restaurant where she works. Like her, Truman is an intuitive. He recognizes Lola's compelling soul quality and foresees the specialness of her unborn child, a "keeper of the flame." Grover, Lola's child, is "Divine Light" in the flesh. The story leads up to his birth and beyond to Hurricane Katrina when he is 5 1/2 years old. As a spiritual prodigy, he influences people and events by merely being what he is. Dr. Luc Fontainebleau, Lola's obstetrician, is a lady's man from uptown New Orleans society. Being a man addicted to the superficial pleasures of the world, he somehow has it in him to respond to a magnetic quality his young patient possesses that he does not understand. His response sets the stage for an unlikely and stormy romance. Lizzie, the eighty-five year old servant to the Fontainebleau household, was the nannie to both Luc and his father. She is the Christian exemplar in the story, a loving presence that instructs, influences and heals. Katrina, the hurricane, is very much alive as a menacing beast who demonstrates her overwhelming power to bring out the worst and the best, even the divine, in people