A Year in the Life of Heretic and Pilgrim Billy Barlow
an excerpt

My novel is about how a mother and teenage son deal with the emotional turmoil of the breakup of their family by an unexpected divorce. The son decides to rebel by changing his religion almost monthly to take advantage of the perks in each one as far as school holidays, getting out of things his current religion won’t allow etc. This, at the same, has the bonus of driving his mother to despair as she is dating a hunky fundamentalist Christian cowboy poet in her own new found but sincere faith. Her son is seriously screwing things up for her new relationship with his Buddhist attire, which he made from old orange fiberglass curtains found in the attic. The poetic justice in that instance was that he becomes very itchy of course. Young Billy will learn something from each religion he mocks and abuses if not perhaps the religion’s intended dogma.

It is a serious story about family relationships and finding one’s place in the world for both the mother and the son as well as about bringing more understanding and tolerance to the differences in religions, but humorous situations are what are going to drive the story from one month, and one religion, to the next in A Year in the Life of Heretic and Pilgrim Billy Barlow.