This is the story of why one man became a priest and why he left

the active priesthood.

Hugh Donlon is a product of my imagination and is not based

on any priest I know. I do not intend to suggest that his story is

typical either of men who become priests or of men who leave the

active priesthood. Nor is his wife intended to be typical of the

women who marry priests who have withdrawn from the ministry.

1 am not writing a sociological study about marriages between

priests and nuns.

Father Donlon, his family, his friends, arid everyone else in the

novel are creatures of my imagination. Those who love to search a

novel for traces of a roman a clef or a "thinly veiled autobiogra-

phy" are perfectly free to do so, of course, having paid their money

and perhaps even having finished the book. A search for " real"

counterparts of the characters of my story, however, tells more

about the searchers than it does about the story.

Nor should it be assumed because Hugh Donlon is a priest and

I am a priest that his voice is my voice. Only Maria speaks for me.

Moreover, like God, I refuse to assume responsibility for the moral

behavior of my creatures.

Background information about the workings of the Chicago

Board of Trade was furnished by Robert Brennan and Richard

Mortell. They are not responsible for any inaccuracies in my

description of what might have happened at that splendid institu-

tion-but in fact did not.