HOME Studies and Devotionals Fiction E-mail Juniper Shade	Fiction Saint Shorty: Short parole officer / lady chaplain long on faith / artist Corot and his kindness / Job's wife's guardian angel - a comical novel about a parole officer's relationship with a lady jail chaplain. The lady chaplain's sermons usually focus on one or more of these points: Jesus is alive, people are people, and death is bad. Shorty.pdf Joint Return: Jewish / Gentile themes, Chicago / West Texas settings amid everyone's struggle with taxes. This is a comical novel in which a young cowboy turned over-confident tax attorney meets two Jewish widows with tax problems. The younger Jewish widow is under the thumb of her tax-crazed mother-in-law, the dowager. In the Book of Ruth, the widows are Jewish and Gentile, and the Messianic figure is Jewish. Here, both widows are Jewish, and the Messianic figure is a Gentile who cannot fulfill the role. He cannot solve everyone's tax problems, including his father's. His father has converted the ranch to a cemetery at the advice of the minister, an American Indian named Pahaska, but now there may be oil under the cemetery. The tax system with its penalties is a symbol of the "law" as depicted in Saint Paul's writings: the law is holy but unattainable, and so marriage to the law (Old Testament) is designed to drive us to marriage with the Messiah (the New Testament). "The purpose of the law is to drive you crazy, so crazy you're ready for marriage." This particular story is also in play and screenplay form but only the novel is reproduced on this web site. Joint Return.pdf