ONE OF TEN LONGLISTED IN THE 2021 SHELF UNBOUND BEST INDIE BOOK COMPETITION FINALIST FOR THE 2021 FOREWORD INDIES AWARDS A naked boy wanders alone through a divided land carrying precious rocks, and seeks refuge in a cave below a hidden monastery in the mountains. A middle-aged man returns to the home of his youth in Lebanon, to a cave where he confronts a thief with a camera and protects a sacred, centuries-old piece of art. Months later, carrying the treasured face in his briefcase, the photographer faces the utter loss of all he has hoped for. Three stories. Three men. One image: a timeless work of art.  The Image  is a profound and compelling collection of linked short stories about faith, hope, belonging, and the search for meaning within a holy land. "When you begin reflecting on the themes of the book—the way Faulkner has lined up his artistic effects, the depiction of the course of events over the centuries of the narrative—a much larger picture emerges, dare I say an iconic one." — Catholic World Report "Who would think that a remote theological controversy could hook a secularized contemporary audience? A writer with a gimlet eye for what is past, passing, and to come." —Kenneth Colston,  New Oxford Review "You’ll sense, by the end [of  The Image ], that even in our age of mechanical reproduction there is more than matter mixed in with the mortar — and more than happenstance in these disparate lives arranged in a strange and mysterious union." — National Catholic Register "When you begin reflecting on the themes of the book—the way Faulkner has lined up his artistic effects, the depiction of the course of events over the centuries of the narrative—a much larger picture emerges, dare I say an iconic one." — Catholic World Report Steven Faulkner grew up in what is now South Sudan and in Ethiopia in Africa, and later in Kansas. After dropping out of college, he worked a variety of jobs: driving dump trucks, planting grave vaults, newspaper and doughnut delivery, and fourteen years as a carpenter. He returned to school, acquired the necessary degrees, and now teaches Creative Writing at Longwood University in southern Virginia. His first book was Waterwalk: A Passage of Ghosts . His new book is Bitterroot: Echoes of Beauty and Loss . Both are nonfiction accounts of father-son journeys along historic trails.