Religion is neither foolish nor hypocritical in John Desjarlais’s excellent Bleeder (Sophia Institute Press, $14.95). When classics professor Reed Stubblefield is disabled in a campus shooting soon after the death of his wife from leukemia, he retreats to a rural cabin to emotionally regroup. He soon hears that Father Boudreau, a local priest, is revered as a “healer,” a man whose touch can cure the sick and the dying. A skeptic himself—Stubblefield’s “god” is Aristotle, about whom he is… Continue

Book Review: Bleeder

By Eleanor Bourg Donlon

Assistant Editor, Dappled Things

Bleeder

By John Desjarlais

Sophia Institute Press, 2009

272 pp., $14.95

ISBN: 978-1-933184-56-2

“A miracle? Or bloody murder?”

The provocative phrase jumped out at us from the book cover starkly displayed on the Catholic Writers Guild table. My cousin drew in her breath, and I muttered (rather inadequately, but with great expression): “Golly.”

We first encountered John… Continue