In The Vale

In the Vale, John Hamm's intriguing fantasy of faith and the afterlife, is packed with exotic action and a boatload of thought-provoking ideas. Set in the Cold War era, this exciting novel tells of a suddenly dead covert operator named Paul who faces his past while meeting his future in a place called the Vale, through which liberated souls pass on the way to heaven. Meeting important people from his life, some of whom were still living when he died, Paul revisits formative times and places in his spiritual and clandestine progress through the world. Remembering fears and doubts, he meets suspenseful adventures in far corners of the world that bring him success, tragedy, guilt, and redemption. In a story replete with action and thought, he finds new meaning and truth in the mysteries of divine reality, time, salvation, tradition, sin, happiness, punishment, and a soul's identity in conflict with its own human ego. In parallel to his review of the past, Paul's visitors in the Vale keep