Earth Dragon Run (Paperback or Softback)

Jobless, friendless, restless and adrift, ex-librarian Daniel Quirk knows he needs a change. Off-again, on-again (at best) in his Catholic faith, he makes an impulse-stop at a church that leads to a flash decision: leave the States and make a new life overseas.

He finds work at an animal refuge in South Africa, where he meets fellow volunteer Zhang “Minnie” Meixing, who’s devoted to protecting the endangered “earth dragon” pangolins that are her special love. But Quirk discovers Minnie’s in hiding from her past. The Communist Party in China has announced a cash bounty for her capture. When her animal rescue efforts threaten to reveal the Party’s involvement in a network of clandestine enterprises―from wildlife poaching to human trafficking to cyberscams―the authorities decide to do what is needed to keep all this secret: abduct Minnie and the animal she loves best.

Minnie’s uncle, a missionary Catholic priest who is himself on the run from the Party, has a plan to free both his niece and her pangolin. But he’ll need the help of Daniel Quirk―who’s not sure he has the strength, or the faith, to extricate prisoners from a Chinese jail cell.

As urgent and timely as tomorrow’s headlines, Earth Dragon Run propels us from San Francisco to the African bushveldt, from Hong Kong to Vietnam and on to a confrontation amid the jungle ruins of ancient Angkor.

David Pinault, Ph.D., is a Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He is the author of the acclaimed work The Crucifix on Mecca's Front Porch. His other publications include Notes from the Fortune-Telling Parrot, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community, and the novel Museum of Seraphs in Torment.