Far Beyond Heaven — Paul Moore

At the threshold of adulthood, Cody Palmeroy takes on a gruesome job at a funeral home while he pursues a philosophy degree at a nearby university. Several years later, he becomes a chaplain at a state prison where hardened, desperate convicts challenge his authority and sanity. Shaken but still clinging to his faith, Cody decides to take on the ghetto as a renegade minister in an unusual urban church where the congregants include pimps and drug dealers. His gritty and graphic adventures in these settings are a rollercoaster ride of existential drama and a striking contrast between the sacred and the profane. Constantly facing the peril of his calling, Cody begins to have dreams and visions of a beguiling goddess who beckons him from beyond the stars. After a tragic event leaves him heartbroken, this goddess guides Cody on an incredible spiritual journey to a mystical place where he experiences a new vision of paradise and human destiny; a destination so astonishing that it could only exist... far beyond heaven.