Swamp Boat

The former low man in the Wilson County D.A.'s office, Frank McCready, sitting in Bea's Diner, wished he hadn't made the short walk from the office to the diner. The once uncrowned king of the Wilson County Courthouse, senior judge Kessler, now knew the secret the former D.A., Husker Shellman, a retired Superior Court judge, kept hidden for two decades. Not Shellman but a woman in a black dress brought down the Road Devils- the motorcycle gang camped out in a once prosperous amusement park.McCready knew Rose, the woman Kessler spoke about, would call him. When she called, she didn't talk about how she fingered the Road Devils responsible for the college student's rape and murder two decades ago. Rose talked about an innocent man who confessed to a crime he didn't commit- killing a televangelist's son. It didn't happen on Lookout Point in Glenside, but in the bayou in Louisiana. In the autumn of her life, Rose insisted on going to Norleans to help a troubled soul. McCready had to go with her. She insisted on it. In a weekend of chaos and confrontation played out on a visit to a televangelist's home and a trip through the St. Tammany Parish bayou, Rose, a clairvoyant, helps a former Tulane dropout, Pearce Meachem, confront the demons haunting him since he and three fraternity brothers picked-up a young woman on Bourbon Street after a Tulane football game. Francis M. Mulligan graduated from St. Joseph's College, now University, studied at Maryknoll seminaries in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Bedford, Massachusetts, and Ossining, New York, graduated from Temple University (M.P.A.) and Temple Law School (J.D.), worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority and law firms in Reading, Pennsylvania. He has written articles for the Berks Barrister, the Temple Law Quarterly, and Pennsylvania Bar Associations publications. His first novel, SPANISH MARKET centers on a Mafia/Cuban confrontation in Wilson County, Pennsylvania. His second novel, SWAMP BOAT reunites the psychic who solved the Woodside Park case in Wilson County with a former Asst. D.A. Twenty years later, Rose, the psychic, wants McCready to help save a troubled soul who confessed to killing a minister's son in the bayou.A Bulgarian in Hitler's Berlin traces the movement of a sixteen- year old Bulgarian who accepts a scholarship to the Berlin Technical University, the best science and engineering university in the world. Beginning in 1939 during his progress toward a degree, young Ivanian encounters a series of roadblocks ending with the destruction of the University's Tower of Learning in November 1943. He's shamed into agreeing to join the German army, but first he must discuss the decision with his parents. On the train home, he rethinks his decision. One passenger, an SS Major, applauds his decision, and as the train pulls into Sofia, Bulgaria, the Major makes a final life changing statement.