Some murders take lives, and some murders save lives. For Father Michael Quinn, the distinction is all too real. A Catholic priest and Pastor at St. John of the Cross parish, Father Quinn is loved and admired by everyone in the small quiet town of Ravenna, Pennsylvania. He oversees the parish, he watches over the children, and he writes. He writes hundreds of stories, sitting at his Rectory window typing away at the keys of his old-fashioned typewriter until all hours of the night. He uses the stories for his homilies, leaving his congregation with a moral message each Sunday that they won't soon forget. When a new police chief arrives in Ravenna and suddenly reopens an unresolved murder case, Father Quinn finds himself at the heart of the investigation. He decides to use his Sunday homilies to guide the chief in the right direction. Through the events of the story, the reader is taken back in time to when Father Quinn was just a boy. By tracing the steps of his childhood, we become witnesses to the circumstances that shaped his life and molded him into the man he is today.