Laura Joyce Moriarty

The Famished Irishman Laura Joyce Moriarty

About the Book Fewer and fewer religious leaders preach love for the disadvantaged, the sick, the poor, or those who are different. Instead, many of them sell their promises of salvation to the highest bidders. Worse they preach wealth, good health, and good luck as God's demonstration of favor. In fact, if you listen carefully, you may have come to believe that God Himself endears wealth and easy living. More and more leaders are blatantly dishonest, hypocritical, and corrupt. Haters carry their signs swearing that they know what Christ wants and yet do nothing Christian. Is it true that His message of faith, hope, and charity is a fraud for suckers? The power of wealth is so crushing and defeating, that you may think God has deserted the victims, and cares only for those hungry for power and decadent wealth. That is because the rationalization behind greed makes it a hard temptation to control. Like an addictive drug, its domination over people's decisions grows as more and more riches and personal power accumulates. Greed is not the only deadly sin of our protagonist. In this novel, a man born into super wealth is not only insatiable, but his excessive self-indulgence leads him into an unprecedented life of crime. To his utter disbelief, he is completely unaware that his ravenous appetite for seeking pleasure and decadence leads to sins that are permanently recorded on his soul. Only when he is rejected by God and sentenced to live in a piece of wood, that is, an existence of painful contemplation, does he become aware of his errors. The worst of human behavior is contrasted by characters who follow God's acts of supreme blessedness known as The Beatitudes. They are people who practice faith, hope and charity. Their lives demonstrate typical human existence as they labor over mundane decisions just to survive. They struggle with adversity, fear, and hardship. These individuals are also unaware that their good works and labors of peace are permanently recorded.