Author to join book club by phone at June 26 meeting

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ROCKFORD—With this week’s discussion of Dignitatis Humanae as a platform, The Observer book club will turn to Michael Meyerson’s “Endowed by Our Creator” for our June 26 session.

Originally scheduled for a later start, the meeting will actually begin, as usual, at 4 p.m. because the author has offered to join us by phone during our gathering.

Meyerson’s book introduces readers to “the explicitly biblical imagery proposed in the first sketches for the Great Seal,” and “the prehistory of reflection and relationships in the colonies that set the context for religious freedom,” says Catholic News Service reviewer Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC.

Msgr. Barr's book is Indie award finalist

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Msgr. Eric Barr, vicar general of the Rockford Diocese, is a finalist in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Writing as E.R. Barr, his Roan: The Tales of Conor Archer, Volume One, (Telemachus Press, ISBN 978-1937387662), is his first novel. In it, he twines Celtic and Native American myths to tell the tale of Conor Archer.

Archer, a young man born in southwest Wisconsin but raised in Chicago, returns to his hometown to honor his mother's deathbed wish. 

Bitten by a strange creature before he leaves the city, Conor arrives in the tiny town of Tinker's Grove weak and disoriented. But the humans -- and the not-quite-human creatures -- he meets there help him discover just who he is and what is demanded of him.