Cullen Dorn

The Hierophant of 100th Street Cullen Dorn 1st Updated edition

***WINNER ? IPPY Bronze Book Award ? Best Regional Fiction (2009)
***WINNER ? BookBundlz Best Book (2009-2010 Winter Award)

The Hierophant of 100th Street is a remarkable, unusual book: a metaphysical novel set in a violent world of slums, gangs, and prisons. Drawing on the author's experience of growing up in the infamous East Harlem neighborhood of 100th Street in the 1960s, the story follows 17-year-old Adam Kadman and his 9-year-old brother John through their respective initiations into the realities of street life while simultaneously introducing real-life characters who dwell in the life of the spirit.

Veiled in the guise of fiction, most of what appears in the book is actually a truthful account of the author's real-life experience. Like the author, the young Adam also ventures out from the slums of New York to discover the meaning of life amid the horrors of existence, and finds romance, mysticism, and purpose.

Seeking to extricate himself from 100th Street, Adam is drafted into the army and later travels to Egypt, where in a harsh world of theocrats and misogynists he falls in love with a young Arab woman. Out of his element, he attacks the social structure?and ends up running for his life. He returns back to the old neighborhood only to find it changed ? destroyed by an invasion of drugs, betrayal, and murder.

By chance he encounters a mysterious man, Clifford Bias (a renowned twentieth-century clairvoyant), and is taken under the wing of the "magus." Discovering his own psychic abilities, Adam enters his mentor's secret society and a world of mysticism and love. Tapping the same rich spiritual vein as The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy and written in the stark language of the streets, this daring, cinematic novel explores the ancient truths and metaphysical mysteries hidden in the fabric of everyday life.