Nailing Down the Saint

Hollywood, fatherhood, levitation. This smart, funny, thought-provoking novel is full of surprises. Duncan Blake is a Kiwi filmmaker whose move to LA has not gone to plan. After a series of setbacks, he's working at a chain restaurant, his marriage is on shaky ground after a porn-related faux pas and his son won't stop watching Aladdin . When Duncan gets the chance to scout locations for a f ted director's biopic of Saint Joseph of Copertino, it's the lifeline he's been searching for. But in Italy, in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century levitator, he must confront miracles, madness and the realities of modern movie making. A novel about the pursuit of dreams, the moral calculus this entails, and the possibility that the rational, materialist worldview isn't all it's cracked up to be. Hollywood, fatherhood, levitation. This smart, funny, thought-provoking novel is full of surprises. Duncan Blake is a Kiwi filmmaker whose move to LA has not gone to plan. After a series of setbacks, he's working at a chain restaurant, his marriage is on shaky ground after a porn-related faux pas and his son won't stop watching Aladdin. When Duncan gets the chance to scout locations for a feted director's biopic of Saint Joseph of Copertino, it's the lifeline he's been searching for. But in Italy, in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century levitator, he must confront miracles, madness and the realities of modern movie making. A novel about the pursuit of dreams, the moral calculus this entails, and the possibility that the rational, materialist worldview isn't all it's cracked up to be