In Due Season

Paul Wilkes has been a writer/journalist, a TV producer, a monastic, a hedonist, a friend of the famous, a family man, and ultimately a true prodigal son. With In Due Season, Wilkes, one of America's most respected writers on religious belief and spirituality, details his search for God--from his working class upbringing in Cleveland to giving up everything he owned and living with the poor to his hedonistic life among the rich and famous. Wilkes's inspiring life story is one of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph, of a faith in God, battered and tried in the crucible of his experience.

Author’s Note ix

Introduction xi

Formation

1. The Seventh Child 3

2. A Vision 15

3. High School: The Man in the Ten-Way Suit 19

4. Coming Home, Leaving Home 25

5. College: Red Arrow Park 35

6. At Sea 44

7. One Hot Day and Night 53

Making It

8. A Young Reporter 59

9. The Big Time, More or Less 67

10. Home, Again 77

11. On the Streets 81

Unmaking It

12. CHIPS Days 93

13. Present 100

14. The Pilgrimage 104

15. Not Present 109

16. The Sofa 118

17. 80 Winthrop 122

18. The Scent of a Woman 131

As Good as It Gets?

19. On the Playing Fields of the Hamptons 145

20. The Perfect Girl for You 155

21. Tracy 165

Getting Bearings

22. The Hermit 177

23. Almost 183

24. A Place to Park 193

25. Father Greer 202

Life, Lived

26. The Writing Life 217

27. A Monk, at Last 233

28. Why? Why Not? 241

Returning

29. Kolinovce 253

30. Worthy or Not 263

31. Return to St. Peter’s 272

32. A Light in the Window 280

Acknowledgments 285

The Author 287

STARRED REVIEW

In an exquisite memoir that often reads like a novel, writer Wilkes (In Mysterious Ways: The Death and Life of a Parish Priest) recounts and reflects upon his life as a Catholic. Although his journey includes a decade as a Protestant and ongoing discomfort with certain aspects of Catholicism, Wilkes deftly mines its imagery and its figures, particularly the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, a major and recurring influence. As Wilkes meanders through a life that begins in a working-class Cleveland neighborhood, he candidly relates his passages of sin and saintliness, including a conversion-in-reverse when he gains fame as a writer and an interlude following the end of his first marriage in which he lives among the poor, caring for society's castoffs. Readers will experience his confusion, the "decaying smell of [his] dying soul" and his triumphs as they wonder if the "it" he seeks will find him and whether he will marry again or become a monk. This is fine, engrossing reading for all who appreciate the struggle inherent in the spiritual quest. (Publishers Weekly, January 2009)

"Paul Wilkes has written the first 21st-century Christian classic. His In Due Season: A Catholic Life will rank alongside, not run second to, Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. It is its companion volume. ? The bridge between ideals that Wilkes builds with this book carries the American Catholic story from the ghetto, through war, through Vatican II, through the hedonistic 1970s, through a changing church, through the ravages of affluence and easy money, to the questioning of today. ? In Due Season ranks alongside Merton's best because Wilkes absorbed Merton, then moved forward with him, and ultimately beyond him."
--National Catholic Reporter, reviewed by Arthur Jones, published March 6, 2009.

"Paul Wilkes has written an honest and revealing memoir in which nothing is held back....In Due Season excels on many levels. Wilkes is a felicitous writer who can be read for the simple pleasure of connecting with a prose artist."
--The Boston Globe (June 2009)

Paul Wilkes is an American writer, speaker, and filmmaker who is best known for his focus on religion, especially Roman Catholicism and its monastic tradition. Wilkes has written for the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and Atlantic Monthly. His book, In Mysterious Ways: The Death and Life of a Parish Priest, won a Christopher Award. In addition to Merton, his PBS documentary, Paul was host and writer of the acclaimed television series Six American Families, which won a duPont-Columbia award for documentary excellence. Praise for In Due Season

"Paul Wilkes's memoir is a love story—and also a story of a struggle with the lover, in his case, God. The son of an immigrant, Wilkes felt that he was called to a priestly vocation, indeed a Trappist vocation. God sent him many signals that this was not his calling. So Paul had to settle for what he thought to be a second-best vocation—a very successful writer. God heaved a sigh of relief. Paul had finally 'got it.' He has written a memoir of the century."
—Andrew Greeley, author, The Catholic Imagination

"Paul Wilkes is that rarest of people—a deeply spiritual man who is also an absolutely exquisite writer. His absorbing new memoir reveals the wonderful things that can happen when you allow God to lead you along life's often bumpy path—whether or not you know where the journey will lead. This is a beautifully written, frequently haunting, and always fascinating story of seeking and finding, serving and loving, and—ultimately—dying and rising. Highly recommended."
—James Martin, SJ, author, My Life with the Saints

"Paul Wilkes's biography takes us through Paul's life, but through the stages of our own lives as well. As a result, at the end of it we can see how we, too, have become more than we ever thought we could be. Wilkes is a great writer–he has a refreshing style, a direct voice, and a stark and unfurbished honesty, even about himself. In Due Season has all the marks of Augustine's Confessions or Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. It gives the rest of us, whatever we've done, wherever we've been, hope. It helps us see the forest of our lives despite the trees.

Read this book. It can put the seasons of your own life into better, broader perspective."
—Joan Chittister, author, Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir

Paul Wilkes' In Due Season takes the reader on a moving journey through an extraordinary era's thickets of American Catholic life and belief—opening at last into wisdom, affirmation, and hope.
—James Carroll, author, Practicing Catholic and An American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award