About this item
When Pope John Paul II died, Suzanne Strempek Shea, who had not been an active member of a church community for some years, recognized in his mourners a faith-filled passion that she longed to recapture in her own life. Shea, never one to do things in a conventional manner or by halves, set out on a pilgrimage to visit a different church every Sunday for a year-a journey that would take her through the broad spectrum of contemporary protestant Christianity practiced in this country.She began with a rousing Baptist Easter service in Harlem, traveled to Colorado's Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame for a sing-along service at the Cowboy Church, and flew to Houston for a multimedia experience at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, the largest church in the country. She sat with the Shakers, and-in silence-with the Quakers; she sang often, danced, and even drew on one memorable occasion.
About the Author
Suzanne Strempek Shea is the author of five novels: Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, Around Again, and Becoming Finola, published by Washington Square Press. She has also written three memoirs, Songs From a Lead-lined Room: Notes - High and Low - From My Journey Through Breast Cancer and Radiation; Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore; and Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith, all published by Beacon Press.
She co-wrote 140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts with her husband, Tom Shea, and with author/historian Michele P. Barker.
This is Paradise, her book about Mags Riordan, founder of the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in the African nation of Malawi, was published by PFP Press on April 19. Her sixth novel, Make a Wish But Not for Money, about a palm reader in a dead mall, will be published by PFP Press on Oct. 5.
Winner of the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work's contribution to the region, Suzanne began writing fiction in her spare time while working as reporter for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Newspapers and The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal.
Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine. She was a regular contributor to Obit magazine.
Suzanne is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing and is writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Mass. She and husband Tommy Shea will lead the inaugural field study in Ireland portion of Bay Path University's new MFA program in nonfiction. Suzanne has taught in the MFA program at Emerson College and in the creative writing program at the University of South Florida.
She lives in Bondsville, Mass., Tommy Shea, most recently the senior foreign editor at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, and their dogs Tiny and Bisquick.
