Jesuits and the Hounds of Heaven: A Novel of the Early Fifties

Four boys from the Bronx - Charlie, Sean, Dan and Fred - are students at St. Aloysius, an elite Jesuit college somewhere in New England. It's now sometime in the early 1950s, Pius XII is the Pope and the Catholic Church still marches to the beat of the decrees of the Council of Trent and First Vatican Council. Presently in their senior year, no longer are they the kind of Catholics they once were back in the Bronx. Dan and Fred seem to have radically distanced themselves from the faith, Charlie appears to be painfully vacillating in his belief, whereas Sean is more or less still a firm believer. One evening in the Fall, they engage in cynical, sarcastic and at times blasphemous discussions, giving vent to their existential bewilderment in this arguably 'hyperrealistic' narrative.