The Swetky Agency - The Holy Mark Submission Synopsis

Submission Synopsis

The Holy Mark
by Greg Alexander

Length:
90,000 Words

Genre:
Literary Fiction

Author
Greg Alexander

Sentence:
The disturbing memoirs of an well-to-do priest who plies the shadows of the sacristy by day and the streets of the French Quarter by night..

Blurb/Logline:
Father Tony probably should never have become a priest. With his family’s money, courtesy of his grandfather’s ties to the New Orleans mob, he could have pursued his interests in food or literature or even worked with helping young boys—only free of all those silly Church strictures. But there was no priest in the Miggliore family, much to the shame of his immigrant grandmother (for what could be more shameful than an Italian family without a priest?). So at his birth, when the old woman beheld a peculiar mark on his head and declared it to be a sign from God—a segno sacro in the only language she knew—this grandson’s destiny was set.

Those marked by God, though, are often marked by men as well: Father Tony’s jealous uncle will never forgive him for finding favor with the Miggliore matriarch and securing so much more than his fair share of the family money. With his ties to the city’s Catholic hierarchy, he’ll plot to bring down his nephew if it takes the rest of his life, which it almost does.

Meanwhile, Father Tony makes the best of this world that was chosen for him, even if he has to conceal his identity and prowl the streets of the French Quarter by night to do it in this novel of family, power, and revenge—the story of one priest caught between the cynicism of his own Southern upbringing and the political machinations of the Roman Catholic Church.

Synopsis:

The narrator is living “in exile” in a tiny North Louisiana parish where he has been reassigned by the Church hierarchy in New Orleans, his city of birth, and where he has to say mass in a leaky trailer. About to mark his Silver Jubilee as a priest, he reflects upon his life, which includes his childhood and twenty-five years in the Church.

Recounting memories of his maternal grandmother, an Italian immigrant who lived in New Orleans for over sixty years yet never learned to speak English, Father Tony muses over a unique birthmark on his head, a mark that the old woman believed to be shaped like a chalice and therefore took as a sign that he was marked by God to be the priest that she had always wanted in the family. She calls the birthmark a segno sacro, The Holy Mark.

Early conflict arises when an aunt and uncle become jealous of the wealthy grandmother’s favoring of the narrator. They scheme with a young priest to trick the old woman into changing her will to favor their families, but the narrator and the black maid foil their plan. The young priest later becomes Archbishop of New Orleans, and he and the uncle remain lifelong enemies of the narrator, who becomes a priest in 1970 and takes the name of his uncle’s handsome son Tony, who used to lead a group of his cousins swimming behind the levee near the grandmother’s house. There the narrator as a boy witnessed sexual experimentation among his male cousins but never took part himself. Those memories become an intricate part of his psyche for life. When Tony Jr. dies in Vietnam, shortly before the narrator is ordained a priest, the soon-to-be Father Tony begins to lose his hair from grief and stress and takes to wearing a toupee, which for years obscures his “holy mark.”

His twenty-five years in the priesthood are divided into several distinct stages:
1970-’74: Father Tony’s first appointment in the suburban parish of Holy Gates, where he serves as assistant pastor and elementary school administrator. His tenure centers around a controversy involving the nuns who staff the school and a political cover-up masterminded by the archbishop to keep the foundress of the sisters’ order from being canonized.

1974-’82: Father Tony is transferred back to the city to run a house for homeless high school boys, a time that Father Tony calls the happiest and most productive years of his life. He experiences a succession of physical encounters with the boys, beginning when one boy enters his room late one night when he isn’t wearing his hair piece and sees his exposed “holy mark.”

1982-’88: The boys’ home closes due to the economic hardships that struck Louisiana in the 80s. Father Tony, bitter over the Church’s refusal to allow him to pursue a Ph.D., is forced to live in a veterans’ home and take a teaching position at a high school. In 1988, when no other priest is available, he leads a group of boys on their senior retreat, which takes place over a weekend at a Benedictine retreat house in a rural area north of New Orleans. There he seduces a vulnerable boy whose sister recently attempted suicide because she was being sexually abused by their father. When the school learns of the incident (after the boy himself commits suicide), they transfer Father Tony to a retirement home for aging nuns.

1988-’95: Father Tony lives and works in the “old nun house” and, at the Church’s insistence, sees a Jesuit psychiatrist. He realizes he is not doing the work he needs to do to be happy, but he doesn’t know how to change his life until one night in 1991, when in a dream he leads a pack of wayward boys out of the French Quarter. Inspired by the dream to emulate his idol, Saint John Bosco (the “Apostle of Youth”), he rents a house in a working class neighborhood near the Quarter, divests himself of his hairpiece and priestly garments, and begins “ministering” to whatever stray boys he happens upon. He is finally exposed when a young, ambitious priest finds some of his explicit videotapes and turns them over to the archbishop. In a dramatic confrontation at the archbishop’s residence, Father Tony faces the archbishop and his Uncle Anthony, who at last has his revenge, extorting from him his inheritance and banishing him to Northern Louisiana, a weakened--but not yet broken--man.

Bio:
I began writing short fiction and sending it out in the mid-90s. To date I have had eleven stories published in academically connected and independent literary magazines across the country. My publication credits include the Talking River Review at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho, Lynx Eye in Los Angeles, ELM at Eureka College in Illinois, Rainbow Curve in Las Vegas, the Sulphur River Literary Review in Texas, Karamu at Eastern Illinois University, and The Distillery at Motlow College in Tennessee.

Before publishing fiction I was a contributing book reviewer for the New Orleans Times Picayune. I reviewed biographies and fiction for the paper

Ensorsements:
Frederick Barton, Emily Toth, Catherine Ryan-Hyde

Movie:
I believe the shocking and timely subject matter might help along these lines. Also, the fact that the story is full of dramatic irony and humor will make it more appealing.

Additional:
My qualifications are my success in publishing literary short fiction, including the seminal version of this story, along with my ten years of teaching in Catholic schools in New Orleans.