Three Who Ventured

Three Who Ventured comprises three separate novellas whose intimate unity in theme effectively creates a single novel. The three venturers—Dennis, Mann Timothy, and John Martin—share a common quest for salvation. Dennis, a Catholic priest, suffers a crisis of confidence and flees into anonymity, there to serve God in total humility. Mann Timothy repeatedly tests his faith with attempts to walk on water, even as the ultimate, and dreadful, challenge to his belief is yet to come. John Martin follows the spirit of adventure into a nether world of impulse and destruction, from which the only salvation is to make an offering of complete, self-emptying love. With Stephen Mirarchi as their seasoned guide, readers can have an expanded appreciation for the depths of feeling and the rich sacramental vision that Connolly possessed in his fiction-writing, as they follow the Three Who Ventured in search of the divine.