The Novel, CONTRITION 

A story by

Robert E. Hirsch 

Contrition is an unusual mixed genre novel (suspense, murder, horror, spirituality) born of the author’s personal and professional experiences as a Catholic educator along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The dynamics of mystery, personal failure, guilt, hope, and redemption are woven into primary characters who share the colorful but rugged, seafaring culture of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The complete gamut of human failure and the hellish introspection that inevitably ensues is laid bare as each of these individuals grapples with his own respective lapse of conscience and ethics when confronted with one of those supreme challenges that life unexpectedly throws onto the path before us as we chase those elusive prizes of human endeavor.

That great, walled façade that individuals construct to insulate themselves against others and the terrors of life is no less formidable than the great facades constructed by powerful and established institutions.  Though the human heart is both pliable and responsive, the hierarchy of the brain can devise impenetrable defenses that are capable of deceiving even the most discerning of witnesses.  Great events give rise to great struggles, and there is no struggle greater than the one that rages within the human heart. Reason loses capital, and slinks away without a backwards glance in the face of deceit.  But truth lingers, forcing us to remember and relive our blackest moments. Forgiving others becomes more reasonable than forgiving self.  Contrition explores the dark underside of the conscience… that infected and decaying region of our past existence that draws each of us back to the pillories of punishment time and time again.

PROMISE OF THE BLACK MONKS 

A novel coming soon

Robert E. Hirsch 

All men, whether great or inconsequential, enter this life utterly naked and unknowing. One day rudely expelled from the warm and safe haven of woman’s womb, every infant born into this life gasps for air in a most humble and helpless beginning as, blinking in terror, he enters the world. Time teaches this innocent creature how to weigh and measure carefully his surroundings. If fortune smiles, this once naked and unknowing infant may discover in man- hood that he has earned his way into an arena where he might drive not only his own future, but that of others. Indeed, he might even impact the entire history of the human race, and determine whether civilization takes one path or the other… if God wills it.  This is the story of one such child.

Introduction

         Born of nobility in France in the year 1066, the fate of seven year old Tristan de SaintGermain is thrown to the winds upon the execution of his father for treason against William the Conqueror of Normandy.  Then, abandoned by his mother who remarries and departs for England, Tristan and his four year old brother find themselves thrown into the monastic world of the Benedictine Black Monks of Cluny, France.  Under the tutelage of Grand Prior Odo de Lagery, who one day will ascend to the very pinnacle of power within the Catholic Church in Rome, Tristan develops into an academic and linguistic prodigy by the age of twelve and becomes known as the Promise of the Black Monks.   Tristan’s unusual talents become useful to the Benedictines as well as to Rome, and the boy soon finds himself pulled into the visceral power struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Heinrich IV as they mercilessly wage spiritual, political and military war upon each other to claim supremacy over the continent of Europe.

Despite attempts by the Benedictines to turn him into one of their own, Tristan’s primary aspiration is to reunite with his mother and thereby reclaim his noble status by the age of eighteen upon completion of his studies at Cluny and Rome.  Then, too, there is also a young Romani girl who he continues to encounter unexpectedly during his journey into manhood.  This beautiful and exotic gypsy girl from Spain known as Mala, though from an entirely different background, shares Tristan’s sense of dispossession and uncertainly about the future.  From the innocence and purity of childhood friendship, she becomes a haunting reminder to Tristan that there may be more to life than following the path of the holy men who surround him.

Grand Prior Odo de Lagery, however, quietly pulls Tristan into the agenda of the Black Monks by  directing the gifted boy’s energies and talents onto the grand stage of continental power and politics.  Tristan unsuspectingly becomes involved in international intrigue and conflict involving such majestic figures of Eleventh Century history as Pope Gregory VII, Emperor Heinrich IV of Germany, Peter the Hermit, la Gran Contessa Mathilda of Tuscany and the Great Abbot Hugh of Semur.

At the forefront of Tristan’s mind throughout his years of monastic development, however, is the absence of his beloved and beautiful Danish mother, Asta.   Desolated by his belief that she abandoned him and his young brother simply so she could more easily remarry Lord Desmond DuLac, the wealthy brother of her executed husband, Tristan struggles to erase her memory--- but discovers that his hopes of finding her again will not dissolve.  Then one day he learns of a letter in the possession of Grand Prior Odo, who has now become a Cardinal-Bishop of Rome, that exposes the complexity and inevitability of her abandonment of her two beloved sons.  She had no choice.

As Tristan finally turns eighteen, amid the first stirrings of talk within the Church of a Holy Crusade against the Moslems to reclaim the Holy Land, the great influences of his life collide as Cardinal Odo, Mala the Gypsy, and his mother, Asta, struggle to determine his destiny.