Derald Hamilton was born in Santa Cruz, California on July 22, 1950 and seven days later adopted by Derald and Naomi Hamilton, two products of rural Iowa. After graduating from community college, Derald transferred to U.C. Davis where he majored in American Studies and became active in the campus Christian program. During the time he was active in that program, he received what he interpreted as a call to the ministry, he enrolled in Phillips Graduate Theological Seminary in pursuit of a Masters of Divinity Degree. Derald continued freelance writing, and at the age of forty, decided he had done enough living to lend credibility to fiction writing. He has since been able to have four of his short stories published, along with non-fiction articles, and brought his first novel into print. |
The Call
Synopsis: Satire and the supernatural blend together in this humorous but disturbing account of divinity school and the people who are drawn to answering the call to ministry. The story is conveyed in the first person through the eyes ofof Ishmale O'Donnell, an observant young man who wrestles with familial dysfunction, possession by the spirit of his long-dead twin brother, and a quest for purification from both. The book chronicles the events that lead up to his seeking out seminary as a means of attaining this purification. Upon his arrival at seminary and his three-year journey through the curriculum, he finds himslf engulfed in an unending torrent of duplicity, impertinence, and societal abnormalities within a communal setting of characters so driven, tenacious, over-the-top, and supercilious it hurts. The mocking inner voice of Ishmael's twin reverberates louder and louder as he desperately tries to comed to grips with wht is taking place about him, while discovering who he is within the confines of a cloistered setting he fins to be inundated with its own unique form of madness. And when he finally does obtain the key to his purification...but such things are not revealed second hand. |