Your New Church Family

By S. P. Hoctor

When 15-year-old teenager Jack Dinero is kicked out of his ultra-religious mother's house for coming out as bisexual, Jack is forced to move in with his father, Alex, a bitter, lonely alcoholic who lives alone in a ramshackle cabin in the tiny desert town of Creosote Canyon, Arizona. Jack chafes under his father's alcoholism, the conservative leanings and homophobia of the local high school, and the poverty and despair that hangs over the entire town. But then he meets his new neighbors, the Decards family. They seem to be everything his own family isn't--happy, healthy, and reasonably well off. They are members of the Church of Universal Love and Truth, a new religious movement that Jack had never heard of before. Jack is turned off by church's strange customs, science fiction gospel, and weird constricting rules, but decides to make friends with the family anyway. The family and the entire church envelops Jack with open arms, and promise him everything he has ever wanted: a family of people to stand by him, a deep sense of purpose in life, and his choice of hot girls and/or guys to date. But then Jack gets caught up in a computer mix-up involving forged grades, a Home Ec class, and a cute nonbinary cyborg named Carrie--and discovers dark secrets surrounding the Church that threaten to rip his life apart, and the lives of his new friends...

Your New Church Family is a darkly comic coming of age tale, a Bildungsroman for this modern age of spiritual confusion. Through the eyes of Jack Dinero you will see tragedy, comedy, deep spiritual truths, the power of the found family to overcome the depersonalization and nihilism of 21st century society, and the desperate need to find a decent taco in a small gringo town. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Book contains some mild language and mild discussion of sexual topics and is deeply irreverent. It would probably be banned in Florida. You have been warned.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0C6W1KK11
• ISBN13: 9798397071499
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"