The Bells

As The Bells opens, thirty-three-year-old Niall O’Malley has failed a five-year mission to live as a monk and is attempting to redefine himself as a high school teacher in New Jersey. The transition has been bumpy. He loves teaching history to inner city teens, but he hits a roadblock when a belligerent student, Colton, possibly a white-supremacist, behaves in ways that threaten Niall. As troubles mount at school, Niall’s girlfriend Lluvia pressures him into make a deeper commitment to their relationship. She wants them to move in together with Lluvia’s pre-teen daughter and elderly mother. Haunted by his failure as a Cistercian monk and his troubles with one man in particular, the abusive Brother Thomas, Niall abandons Lluvia and heads back to his old monastery in Massachusetts for a final showdown with Thomas, now dying of ALS. Redemption for Niall is elusive as he strives to mend his faith.

ADVANCED PRAISE
“If you are new to the work of Cai Emmons, prepare to be awed by her sentences and immersed in her world of ideas, as she grapples with goodness, faith, and forgiveness in The Bells. If you are a longtime fan of Cai’s, you will marvel at the gift she left us, a feat of generosity and imagination. What begins as a story about Niall, a lapsed monk now corralling a classroom of rowdy teenagers, soon transforms into an examination of making oneself whole in the face of a troubled past. Remarkably, though, The Bells, a book Cai finished on the day she died, is a story of life: how to live fully, embrace our messy complications, and swim toward love.”
—Miriam Gershow, author of Closer and Survival Tips: Stories