Angel Fire » (Reprint)

A native of Chicago, Reverend Andrew M. Greeley, is a priest, distinguished sociologist and bestselling author. He is professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, as well as Research Associate at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. His current sociological research focuses on current issues facing the Catholic Church-including celibacy of priests, ordination of women, religious imagination, and sexual behavior of Catholics.

Father Greeley received the S.T.L. in 1954 from St. Mary of Lake Seminary. His graduate work was done at the University of Chicago, where he received the M.A. Degree in 1961 and the Ph.D. in 1962.

Father Greeley has written scores of books and hundreds of popular and scholarly articles on a variety of issues in sociology, education and religion. His column on political, church and social issues is carried by the carried by the Chicago Sun Times and may other newspapers. He stimulates discussion of neglected issues and often anticipates sociological trends. He is the author of more than thirty bestselling novels and an autobiography, Furthermore!: Confessions of a Parish Priest.

Someone to watch over me? Sean Seamus Desmond, newly-announced Nobel Prize winner, relished the unknowns of science, but a real-life mystery of love and passion...in the form of a beautiful woman who says she's his guardian angel? Impossible. Yet there in his New York hotel room is an enchanting creature named Gabriella Light, who inexplicably and dramatically has just saved his life.

Voluptuous and exquisitely dressed, sexy Gabriella, angel or not, is determined to keep him alive as a terrifying web of intrigue closes around him. Pursued by a very real and present danger, Sean Desmond will question his own sanity and his deepest beliefs, as he experiences what cannot be rationalized away as anything other than a powerful, radiant, and transcendent love...one that will test him as a man too long afraid of the human and divine fires within himself.

Publishers Weekly

Greeley (Lord of the Dance) has now written a murky ``romantic mystery/fantasy'' about a Nobel laureate who is astounded when a lissome guardian angel in couture garb comes to earth to protect him. Sean Desmond, a theoretical biologist, hasn't been luckyhis wife left him to go into ``femtherapy'' and then remarried. Professionally, Sean achieves glory by observing ``sudden evolutionary leaps'' in fruit flies, resulting in a new breed of hardy ``superflies.'' In New York, which he visits en route to claiming the Nobel in Stockholm, gunmen nearly kill him before the angel Gabriella intervenes, posing as Sean's assistant. Greeley explains, somewhat ambiguously, that the assailants want to produce supermen and see Sean as an obstacle. Among his other foes are members of Project Archangel, a private English company trying to accelerate evolution for sinister purposes. Sean, predictably, adores Gabriella, and Greeley includes several endearing scenes between this unlikely twosome. Unfortunately, he also clutters the story with less engaging topics, such as the theory that angels are a species superior to humans in the evolutionary process. Gabriella voices startling sentiments for an angel, especially when she denounces the ``despicable'' Kennedys as ``satyrs.'' (July)