To Never See Heaven

To Never See Heaven opens with the protagonist, AntonyShrader, agonizing over his decision to write a commencement speechtraditionally given by his husband. This year is different. His lover isdying. In order to bring himself to do this speech, Antony must lookback at the pages of his own life that have brought him to fulfill thisduty. After all, a commencement is not the end. It is the beginning.Antony's story begins as a gay teenager born into privilege.However, Antony's sensitive nature and unresolved traumas hadconvinced him that he had lived a past life as a suffering poet. Hebelieved that the inevitable separation from his family and their elitistworld was his chance to redeem himself from beyond a world he knew.Antony could not shake these feelings of his fated doom and loneliness.To escape this void, he would flee to study in Paris, either to rise to thetrue destiny of his life or to lay down his body where he felt the trueorigins of his spirit had been conceived. There, Antony would fall inlove, but while his heart and mind flourished in Paris, his body and spiritwould succumb to addiction; the demons of his past life came to haunthim. In the process of trying to outrun himself, his fall into the darknessinevitably brings him to humility and true healing. There he found whathe had needed most, his own love and acceptance.