The Oracles Fell Silent

***OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DATE: FEBRUARY 21, 2014*** The Oracles Fell Silent by Lee Oser: When the legendary Sir Ted Pop hires young Richard Bellman as his secretary, Bellman’s work on the great man’s memoir transforms his young life into a divine comedy—or is it a devilish farce? In a New York beach house in Southampton, Bellman treads the forbidden ground of Ted’s final hour with Johnny Donovan, his partner in fame, who “fell” from a London rooftop in 1969. Sir Ted battles false prophets and mad messiahs for control over his own story, but what rock’s biggest mystery reveals to Bellman is the unthinkable hand of God. “You think Johnny understood his fate when he fell? You think you understand your fate, or I understand mine? Your story will be written, all right, but not by you. It will be written by someone you could never buy, and you wouldn’t like the narrative. Not that it matters, but you would scarcely recognize yourself, not since you lost your soul on its great crusade to nowhere.” Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy that render truths with what Flannery O'Connor called an unyielding "realism of distances." Such works find redemption in uncanny places and people; wrestle us from the tyranny of boredom; mock the pretensions of respectability; engage the hidden mysteries of the human heart, be they sources of either violence or courage; articulate faith and doubt in their incarnate complexity; dare an unflinching gaze at human beings as "political animals"; and suffer through this world's trials without forfeiting hope.