The Tricky Part

Book excerpt: Martin Moran_s family lived in a Denver neighborhood called Virginia Vale. But what seemed most central, most important, was that they belonged to Christ the King the church and school up the hill. And what Martin learned, as a good Catholic boy, was that the Hereafter was what counted; the here fickle and unreliable was the problem.Martin_s world changed abruptly when, at the age of twelve, a church-camp counselor seduced him. New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley--praising Moran_s one-act play, The Tricky Part, for the quiet victory of rendering chaos with this kind of clarity--called his telling of this event a crystalline accumulation of moments.In his memoir Moran takes us deeper into the ongoing sexual relationship that followed the seduction, and for the first time he explores its effects upon his adult life. And finally, in a scene of stunning power and restraint, Moran confronts the perpetrator, now an old man in a veteran_s hospital. In examining the paradoxes of human relationships, Moran manages to uncover divine grace in the most unlikely forms.