I’m a descendant of Scandinavian immigrants who eventually found their way to a farming community in Central Minnesota near the end of the 19th century. My paternal great-grandparents settled a few miles north of the town of Upsala, and my maternal great-grandparents settled a few miles south of town. Members of both families remained until my parents married and moved off the farm and into town where Dad became a successful small-town businessman. I was baptized and confirmed in the same Swedish-Lutheran church that nurtured my grandmother and mother.

I experienced a glorious childhood in Upsala in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Bike riding, ball playing, pony riding, and especially fishing and water-skiing on nearby Cedar Lake where G-pa and G-ma Holmen lived in the lakeside retirement home they built. When high school rolled around, I was active in sports, and when I was honored as valedictorian of my forty-two-person graduating class, I was merely following family tradition after three of Dad’s sisters, Mom’s sister, and Mom herself had been valedictorians before me.

In the fall of ’66, I was off to Dartmouth, but within two years, I arrived in Vietnam as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. On Christmas eve 1970, I was discharged in time to return to Dartmouth for the start of winter term. Following Dartmouth, I endured the paper chase of law school at the University of Minnesota before becoming a trial attorney in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

In the early ‘90s while continuing my law practice, I studied with the Benedictine monks at the nearby St. John’s School of Theology where I discovered a keen interest in the history behind the formation of the Biblical canon. Who were the authors? What were the circumstances that influenced them? For whom were their writings intended?

Years later, my interest in Paul, the principal author of the Christian New Testament, resulted in publication of A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the Apostle. Readers sang the novel’s praises. “Regardless of your personal religious background, this book is absolutely breathtaking.” “The novel was difficult to put down and brought to life a distant time and place with such humanity and liveliness.” Academic reviewers praised the historical authenticity of the novel’s treatment of the lives and times of the first generation of the Christian church.

My experiences as an army Ranger scouting the jungles of the Central Highlands of Vietnam serve as inspiration for my bold, dark, and intense novella entitled Gonna Stick My Sword in the Golden Sand. One reviewer suggested the book was “not merely a war story but a story of life and choices.”

For years, I followed the struggle of LGBTQ Christians to be fully accepted by their churches, and when my own Lutheran denomination changed their policies during their national convention in Minneapolis in 2009, I was there as a “graceful engagement” volunteer. Queer Clergy, A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism, remembers the queer prophets and celebrates the journey toward full inclusion. This non-fiction book was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award.

More recently, I have returned to early church history and the tumultuous 1st century that saw a Jewish revolt against Roman imperialism.Wormwood and Gall: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the First Gospel remembers the context but fictionalizes the characters behind the “Gospel According to Mark.”