Faith For Hire: A New Haven Story

By Terrence C Franklin

Faith for Hire: A New Haven Story
By Terrence C. Franklin
From the acclaimed writer of Broken Cradles and The Leftover Sons-both A New Haven Story-Terrence C. Franklin returns with his most intimate, unsettling, and quietly powerful novel yet.

Shaped by international travel, long conversations over fine meals, and the unfiltered truth of stand-up comedy, Franklin writes with rare clarity about the moments when ordinary lives are pressed into moral reckoning.
In Faith for Hire, Franklin brings us back to New Haven-not as a backdrop, but as a living presence. A city that remembers everything. A city that watches who stays silent and who dares to speak.

Larry Tinney is a retired mailman who did everything right and still came up short. With his wife Evie facing nonstop medical bills, Larry takes a job he finds online, driving for a megachurch that promises flexibility, dignity, and just enough money to survive. The church calls it service. The paycheck calls it relief.
But relief comes with routes.
And routes come with patterns.

As Larry drives through neighborhoods that he once delivered mail to, he begins to notice what doesn't belong-unmarked stops, nonprofit addresses that lead nowhere, envelopes without names. What starts as a job becomes a burden, then a reckoning.
Standing beside him are his children: Curtiss, steady and quietly forceful, whose skill with data turns suspicion into proof; and Asha, perceptive and unyielding, who refuses to let the truth be softened or sold back to them. Together, they uncover a sprawling network of faith turned enterprise-led by a pastor who built an empire on belief, obedience, and silence.
What follows is not just a trial, but an unmasking.

As institutions collapse and the city shifts its gaze, the Tinney family learns a hard truth: justice does not always feel like victory, and doing the right thing can cost you the place you once called home.
Faith for Hire is a novel about moral pressure and quiet courage. About how systems bend ordinary people-and how love, family, and truth can straighten them again. It is about what happens after the verdict, when the noise fades and life must still be lived.
Franklin writes with restraint and compassion, crafting a story that never shouts-but never looks away.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GP5L9JZJ
• ISBN13: 9798248499670
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"