At a time and in a place of greatest affluence and freedom, with technological means to connect all of us together at all times, many of us are unhappy, isolated and on the question of meaning we feel lost. It was to address this problem that Larry McCloskey wrote this new Castle Quay Books release entitled
Lament for Spilt Porter: Longing for Family and Home
During the past thirty years, Larry McCloskey has become an accomplished writer while working his day job/vocation in Ottawa helping students with disabilities. He admits he wrote Lament for Spilt Porter with a sense of urgency born of the need to reconcile the haunting sense of loss with our muted desire to find our way home. As Larry puts it “the desire for home—how we fit into this life and anticipate the next—is our most basic spiritual impulse, fuelling our hopes and fears, passions and pathologies. But sadly, for many of us, the hunger for home has been supplanted by the primacy of self, with predictable results.”
Larry skillfully presents the contemporary dilemma—a modern world, where the individual rules without rules, but the cohesiveness of family and the need for home remains a strong urge with no satisfaction. Finding our way home and living the spiritually examined life has become more difficult in a warp-speed modern distracted world. So, as Larry concludes, maybe the only way forward is to look back, rediscover the wisdom from the cast of characters that populate our past and informs our present, to find the miracle in the minutia, to go home.
Lament for Spilt Porter was the runner-up to the winner of the “Word Guild Best New Manuscript Award” for 2018. It is an insightful, well written, humorous and poignant look at modern life!
About the Author
Larry McCloskey received two master’s degrees from Carleton University before working as the Director of the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities for the past thirty years. He lives in Ottawa with his three daughters, three granddaughters, two dogs, and his wife.
He is the author of several books including Murder at Summerhouse (General Store Publishing House), Tom Thomson’s Last Paddle (Dundurn Publishers), Murder Fit for a King (Dundurn Publishers), Unspoken (Dog-Eared Books), and The Dog Who Cried Snake (Dog-Eared Books), and his newest young adult novel entitled, A Christmas Dragon (Dog-Eared Books)
What People Are Saying About Lament for Spilt Porter
“The appeal of Lament for Spilt Porter to me and, I believe, to others is that it explores the human experience in a way that is not parochial. In other words, its message is not restricted to a particular sub-culture of people coming from a certain worldview. The themes that Larry wrestles with in the book transcend narrow niches. He explores themes that are part of our experience as humans, independent of our faith position: belonging, family, meaning, suffering, relationships, etc. This is very attractive to me. The stories in the book are earthy, gritty, honest, and real. In fact, I came away from reading Spilt Porter with the similar feeling that I get when I read the Psalms in the Bible—life is tough and mysterious and beautiful all at the same time.”
-Chris Barrett, National Director, The Navigators of Canada
“Lament for Spilt Porter is a deeply intelligent, warm-hearted confrontation with many of the big questions about faith, lost and found. With unswerving intensity, and even compassionate humour, it celebrates the life and death realities of flesh and blood people.”
-Richard Taylor author of House Inside the Waves: Domesticity, Art and the Surfing Life.
“Larry’s personal reflections on yesterday’s journey of faith and family offer hope and wisdom for tomorrow.”
-Chris Keyes, VP Programming Catholic Christian Outreach
“I found the issues raised in Lament for Spilt Porter to be stimulating and worth exploring, and I particularly enjoyed the narrative related to Larry’s Irish Catholic background.”
-Dr. Bette Stephenson, Former Ontario Minister of Education, Colleges and Universities; Officer of the Order of Canada
Lament for Spilt Porter: Longing for Family and Home is available at most bookstores through Parasource Marketing & Distribution Canada or Castle Quay Books web site. www.castlequaybooks.com
ISBN 978-1-988928-05-0 soft cover
E-book ISBN 978-1-988928-06-7
$18.95 in Canada
256 pages, size 6″ x 9″
Distributed by Parasource Marketing & Distribution Canada
Phone: 1-800-263-2664 custserv@parasource.com
For more information visit www.parasource.com or www.castlequaybooks.com
For more information, author interviews or book reviews:
Larry N Willard – publisher
lwillard@castlequaybooks.com