The "Good" Reverend

Book excerpt: Anthony Angus O'Donnell has lived a life of suffering, cruelty, and depravation, and it has created a monster. Born at the height of the Irish Potato Famine, he suffered indignities that only a cruel world can heap upon one so unlucky as to be conceived in Ireland at that time. As a child, the regular beatings he endured inspired in the young victim a burning desire to rise above and succeed. Determined to achieve his dreams, he decided early on that morality is no barrier to his goals. There is no sin, no lie, no foul maneuver he will not use in this battle. His journey through college and his marriage to the daughter of an ultra-rich Englishman only served to harden his resolve. Because of his ever-maddening father-in-law, O'Donnell shifts his career ambitions to the Church of England. Almost immediately, the young man's steely ambition is rewarded with success for both O'Donnell and the church itself. He uses every one of the tools he adopted as a young man as a weapon to achieve what he demands from his life. At sixty-five, the famed Canon of the Bath Cathedral in England has more than earned the sobriquet of the "Good" Reverend.