The Second Son: ...in the shadow between faith and science... - Softcover

Kawakami, Gary K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1520455658 ISBN 13: 9781520455655

Publisher: Independently published, 2017

Synopsis

What is the nature of man? Is he flesh and blood or spirit and soul? Is man an individual being independent of all others, or is his very being a product of all who surround him? These are age old questions whose answers have eluded man for millennia, and in The Second Son, these are raised in a way that has not been possible until this time in history. At the basilica of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, a venerable relic known as the Shroud of Turin is carefully preserved and protected by the Church, and is purported to be the burial cloth of Christ, bearing a miraculous image of Him after His crucifixion and resurrection. On this cloth are the distinct markings of a Semite man who had been whipped with a scourge, nailed to a cross, crowned with thorns, and pierced on his side with a spear, a trail of blood dripping from that long ago wound. Over the many years, there are multiple incidences and intrusions surrounding the Holy Shroud, but it remains apparently untouched, timeless and venerated. The latter part of the 20th century brought young men and women of the occupied Warsaw Pact countries to the community of Soviet scientific institutions, after which they would return to their own countries to share their knowledge and adopted ideologies. In such a place, a young Czech, Novak, and an equally young Russian, Kuriev, had met and formed a friendship and bond. Over time, Novak had left the work of science and taken up the work of faith in the Catholic Church, while Kuriev continued his work in science, advancing quite far before falling into disgrace. The presence of the Catholic Church in the orbit of the Soviet Union and the intersection of Cold War politics provided an opportunity where the influence of the West could extract men of the cloth from within the Warsaw Pact and essentially provide asylum within the Church in the Vatican, leaping over the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. When the disgraced Kuriev sought help from his old friend Novak, now in Rome, they were to find that while their careers had gone in opposite directions, their interests were to bring them together. Paul Andrews, an accomplished genetic researcher with a part-time country doctor job, travels to Tarsus, a remote village in Turkey, where he volunteers to provide care at a clinic for those who need it most. Paul meets and befriends Father Kemper, a retired Catholic priest who has returned to Tarsus where he had lived years before, and Father Kemper is joined by his adopted son Chris, who had been raised in Tarsus many years past. Paul recruits Chris to help him at the clinic, and begins to realize that Chris is not only a likable and charismatic young man, but he also seems to have other gifts. In Tarsus, Paul has also been asked by his consortium to investigate some unusual events in the area from the past, and in doing so, he uncovers troubling remnants of advanced medical work that been conducted far from the scientific community. Paul’s investigation is unwittingly joined by Stacey Grant, a forensic journalist who he had met and fallen for on his way to Turkey, and she has her own reasons to find her way to the same place as Paul, relating to a decades old intrusion of the Holy Shroud of Turin in Italy. As Paul and Stacey separately learn more about the mysterious past events in Tarsus, small incidences occur around the clinic, and then significant, seemingly miraculous events occur, and as the people of Tarsus gather to bear witness, others of high office and power return to claim what they believe to be their rightful progeny. The relationship between the free will of a child and the determined will of a parent is sometimes a conflict of wills, and the bonds that bind are sometimes broken. In The Second Son, there is an intersection of worlds, where men of science and men of faith confront their own reality as well as that of the other, and find more than the truth that was sought, at a cost.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1520455658
• ISBN 13: 9781520455655
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 310