The Sower and the Seeds

About the Book

As Jack Cramer sits at his desk in the newsroom one day plodding over routine and boring background material for a story on police corruption, sidebar stuff, he’s ordered into the office of the features editor. There he meets a crotchety old lady named Elizabeth Callahan who, through bribery and manipulation, starts him on a quest that will introduce him to the Irish mobs of Boston in 1919, the marijuana trafficking in Northern California, and the IRA in Ireland. His commission, simple at the beginning, is to write a biography of Oliver Callahan, Elizabeth’s father; but in his attempt to record the facts of the man’s life at the beginning of the century, he begins to uncover remarkable stories about Irish mobs, about famous and infamous people, and about the startling events of the period, all of which eventually lead him to an obscene discovery right out of a Greek tragedy. Despite this discovery, however, he is determined to see Oliver Callahan’s story to the end and soon finds himself in a small town in Northern California where he becomes wrapped in the mystery of Callahan’s death and a secret involving marijuana trafficking that makes him a threat to the local residents. Along the way he learns that Jarlath Gallagher, Elizabeth’s uncle, can help him uncover many of the mysteries, but Jarlath will do so only after he makes Jack promise to find out if his alienated son, who was last seen in Belfast, Ireland, is still alive. In Ireland, Jack is faced with a triple challenge. First, to find out how Elizabeth’s mother and sister died; second, to help the nurse Helen Wright discover who her father and mother were; and third, to find Jarlath’s son. Incredibly, he discovers all three of his challenges will force him into an association with members of the IRA, and a reformed IRA killer: all which lead him into a murderous revenge that lasted thirty years. Frustrated throughout, Jack will occasionally find solace by returning to the one place he calls home, Nuevo Inocentes, where he can reunite with a remarkable young man named Bobby; with Elizabeth Callahan, who has moved there to die; with Clara Steinman, an ancient curmudgeon with a heart of gold; with a strange dog named Alfred; and with the generous Capuchin friars. Finally, in a British prison in Belfast, Ireland, it all comes together, but only because of the intervention of Bobby, the remarkable young man from Nuevo Inocentes. Jack’s quest to uncover the mystery of the Callahans and the Gallaghers will take him from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez Valley, to Northern California, to Boston, to Cork and Dublin and Belfast, Ireland and finally back to the little village he always called home. There he writes the biography of the Callahan family for Elizabeth, the old crone, and then is persuaded to tell the real story to a friend

About the Author

Having retired after forty-two years of teaching and writing academic documents of all kinds, for the last seven years Den is Huckaby has turned to fiction, his first love, but only because of the patient approval of his wife Donna and the fact that their four children are now about their own lives. A product of a rigid mother as well as stern Catholic nuns in grammar school and pragmatic Jesuit priests in college, he has just begun to learn how to relax by hacking away on the golf course and spending time with his wife and his handicapped son whom he calls “Bucky.”