Bleeder — John Desjarlais

When classics professor Reed Stubblefield is disabled in a school shooting, he retreats to a rural Illinois cabin to recover and to write a book on Aristotle in peace. Oddly, in the chill of early March, the campgrounds and motels of tiny River Falls are filled with the ill and infirm -- all seeking the healing touch of the town's new parish priest, reputed to be a stigmatic.



Skeptical about religion since his wife's death from leukemia, Reed is nevertheless drawn into a friendship with the cleric, Reverend Ray Boudreau, an amiable Aquinas scholar with a fine library -- who collapses and bleeds to death on Good Friday in front of horrified parishioners. A miracle? Or bloody murder?



Once Reed becomes the prime 'person of interest' in the mysterious death, he seeks the truth with the help of an attractive local reporter and Aristotle's logic before he is arrested or killed -- because not everyone in town wants this mystery solved…