"Mickey's Mystery Blue" tells of a bright but bereft thirteen year old boy coming to understand through such poignant experiences as first love - as well as through a series of strange illuminations - the essential value of life, and of the faith which alone gives it meaning. Remarkably, Mickey grows into this knowledge with the help of a mysterious blue presence, benevolent but stern, which comes suddenly to abide with and guide him. Here is how the story goes. Mickey is clever and funny, but neither a good student nor one of the popular kids at school. He's a bit short for his age, careless about his appearance - and unhappy. His mother and father love him and his sulky sister Janey, but they are downhearted fallen away Catholics who have not been raising their children in the faith, and they have money problems. One dank December morning, Mickey awakens as usual to the same depressing world: his somewhat passive father already gone to his underpaid job as a custodian at an office building, his stressed mother throwing breakfast together before she goes to work as a clerk at a discount store, and his older sister fretting as usual about something or other. Mickey departs unkempt and unprepared for school, and even sadder than usual. Strangely, as he steps out of his shabby little row home, he becomes aware of a pale blue mist hovering beside and just above him - but which disappears when he turns to look directly at it. So Mickey lets the presence, which seems somehow kindly, ride his right shoulder as he walks to school - and he begins to feel less sad. Through the day and from that time on, Mickey's small blue cloud becomes more active, changing in shape and shade, motion and density, as it gently but intently influences him through various decisive situations and difficulties. Events quickly complicate, escalate, and beleaguer the mystified boy as he strives earnestly and with increasing awareness to cooperate with his blue companion, to follow its silent lead and do the right thing. Some good things begin to happen. Mickey courageously faces down a nemesis who has bullied him for more than a year. And he opens himself up to a friendship with Laura Tran, a smart and pretty girl, tall and thin with almond eyes, who has liked him from a distance. He begins to do better at school. He even combs his hair. And Laura likes his corny humor. But bad things also occur. Laura is stricken with an unexplainable grave sickness. Mickey discovers that his parents have fallen into a serious moral crisis. Life itself is laid bare in its fragile beauty and infinite worth, as are the malevolent forces that threaten it. These plights press hard on Mickey but - with the steadfast help of his blue presence - move him as well toward a deeper way of seeing and a different way of acting. As things intensify, Mickey has vivid visionary dreams in which the blue persona takes on more intelligible form - dreams which confront him with personifications of diabolical evil, dreams which reveal to him that there is a holy power which overcomes such evil. As the action tenses and accelerates toward resolution, Mickey gradually awakens to a saving wisdom, at once pained and consoling, which his blue friend, he now sees, was sent to enable him to know. The story will be particularly relevant - and challenging as well - to Christian, particularly Catholic, adolescents; but it will also be appealing to readers of any age or persuasion who will find its richly imagined scenario, authentically human theme, deft characterization, and forcefully eloquent prose style compelling and gratifying.
About the Author: Alfred Hanley - in addition to "Mickey's Mystery Blue" - has published five other books: three novels, "The Beast with Seven Heads: An Improbable Sleuth Mystery," "Apparition," and "The Passage of Palmer Day"; two non-fiction works, "Fatima at a Hundred Years" and "Hart Crane's Holy Vision," a literary study; and "Testaments: Poems in Witness of the Covenant." Holding a doctorate in English literature, Hanley is retired as Professor and Department Chair from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, after more than forty years of service as a teacher and administrator in higher education. He and his wife Loretta have raised six children, one a Catholic priest and the other five happily wed, who to date have blessed them with twenty grandchildren and two great grandchildren.