Holy Smoke

Holy Smoke is a comic novel that takes place in a suburban Catholic high school in Downriver Michigan. The protagonist, Paul Moret, is a middle-age man who is looking for a fresh start in life after experiencing a series of setbacks, beginning with the loss of his wife to cancer. The principal at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow High School, Sister Ophelia, is a tyrannical nun intent on ridding the school of each and every student who fails to live up to her high standard of personal conduct. She hired Paul Moret believing that he would be on her side in what she refers to as the ongoing war between us (the school faculty) and them (the student body), only to discover that Paul, like all the counselors she has hired and fired prior to Paul, is more sympathetic to the students rather than to her. Paul is quick to discover that the only reason he was hired was that he was the only candidate for the job. To put it bluntly, no one else wanted the position. Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow (OLPS) is a failing school, replete with problems: a declining enrollment, a demoralized teaching staff, and a student body comprised of a number of students who wished they were anywhere else but at OLPS. In addition, the school's educational fund has mysteriously become depleted, making it impossible to repair the school's many physical defects. Add to this mix an elderly parish priest who appears to be indifferent to the school's impending demise and it becomes understandable that the new counselor might want to hide away in his office. In fact, no one at OLPS appears to be engaged. Even the principal, Sister Ophelia, spends most of her time playing computer solitaire behind closed doors. A crisis is looming, but no one seems to care or to know what to do about it. As it turns out, it is Paul Moret who the employees turn to. The question becomes: will the new counselor be up to the task of taking the initiative to do whatever it is going to take to turn things around at OLPS before the school is forced to close its doors, or will he not? Everything that is wrong with the school is only a symptom of a larger problem that needs to be addressed.