Journeying with Father Dan and a coyote along the via negativa

In the first paragraph of Daniel Hornsby’s debut novel, the main character, a retired and homeless Catholic priest, watches a coyote struck by a minivan fly off to the side of the road, “a gold smudge.” Father Dan stops to take the coyote into his car, names him Bede after the Venerable Bede, and goes to seek medical care for the wounded animal.

This is the first sign that Father Dan’s road trip will be weird. The via negativa (negative way) in question is the literal road between Indiana and Washington State, where Father Dan is headed be­cause he doesn’t know where else to go. Despite the fact that he is carrying a personal library that includes Bede’s homilies and the collected works of Origen, he seems to be discarding his faith as he goes. His aimless path includes such national treasures as the world’s largest ball of paint and a world-famous bottomless pit.

Father Dan blames the spiritual via negativa for the way that his life has devolved. His fascination with The Cloud of Unknowing led to a reading list—“the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Julian of Norwich.” This fascination, he claims, is “at the root of why I no longer live at the rectory, why I now live in a Toyota Camry.” He gradually disengaged from the religious institution that sponsored his life and gave him a job. In the end, the two could no longer coexist.