c. 2006 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ In a long and distinguished career spanning three decades, journalist Jason Berry has been there, done that and written about it.

His books range from dispatches from the front lines of the civil rights movement to the rise of contemporary New Orleans music to the crisis in the Catholic Church. He’s also written about Louisiana politics and culture and New Orleans’ unique spiritual traditions.

In 2002, he made his debut as a playwright with “Earl Long in Purgatory.” Now, add “novelist” to that list of writerly identities.

Not that he’s been an overnight success as a fiction writer.

How long has he been working on “Last of the Red Hot Poppas,” his first novel? “Forever,” he said, with his easy laugh. “Forever.”

“Last of the Red Hot Poppas” had its genesis in 1982, a year Berry spent in Paris, where he produced a good 80 or 90 pages of a first draft, then put the book away.

In the ’90s, when he was a lecturer on Louisiana culture and literature for the Elderhostel program, he noticed that his students had a passion for Louisiana politics, and for the Long story in particular. That led to his play, “Earl Long in Purgatory.”

Then came a crystallizing moment in 1991, when Berry was in New Orleans to cover the notorious civil court battle between televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Marvin Gorman.

“I spent a lot of time covering the Swaggart trial,” Berry said, “which was the most surreal legal drama I’ve ever seen _ and I’ve seen some pretty strange ones. And I woke up one morning and I thought, `Do I go downtown to see Gorman and Swaggart square off or do I go out and follow David Duke and Edwin Edwards in the governor’s race?’

“For me, those three _ Swaggart, Duke and Edwards _ are the unholy trinity, representing these different strands in the otherworldly public life of this state, the way religion, politics and show business intersect. And so I began to think about a narrative that would take those three strands … and kind of interweave them.”

Berry’s novel focuses on the aftermath of a colorful Louisiana governor’s death, and, as Berry says, “When the big man dies abruptly, everyone goes into a tilt.”

The novel features a cast of characters that could thrive only in Louisiana, including a regal first lady from a political family; a young lawyer named Henry Hubbell, drawn back from France to enter the political fray and charged with investigating the governor’s death; and an African-American mortician named the Rev. Christian Fraux.

“I finally got the book the way I wanted it,” Berry said. “You know, you channel yourself into different characters and move them around a bit, and when I started, Hubbell was something like me. But Sartre has a line _ `I look back on the young man I was and laugh because I’m not him anymore’ _ and you know how midlife gives you a certain privileged hindsight. So I was able to kind of make fun of him a bit, and the character I really invested myself in most deeply is Christian Fraux, the moral intelligence of the book. …

“At one time or another, everyone is talking to God, everyone is trying to figure out the right thing to do. I really think of it as a spiritual comedy.”

Then he was drawn back into journalism, increasingly called to comment on the crisis in the church, after he wrote “Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children” in 1992 and “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II” (co-written with Gerald Renner) in 2004.

His energies for fiction were diverted. Next came Hurricane Katrina, and life in Louisiana took on a sharp focus. Like all New Orleans writers in exile, Berry feared for his books and papers left behind.

He returned to the city about 10 days after Katrina hit and paid an off-duty cop _ “this being New Orleans,” he said _ to get him into the city. His house had survived intact.

After a brief promotional tour for the book, Berry will get back to work on the documentary based on “Vows of Silence,” as well as a book about jazz funerals and a play-in-progress about Catherine of Siena.

Perhaps nothing has been more challenging for Berry _ both personally and professionally _ than investigating his own church.

“It has been quite a struggle to hold on to my faith,” he said. “Growing up, my own experiences with priests were quite benevolent. I got a terrific education at Jesuit (High School) and then at Georgetown. The Jesuits taught me how to think, to use the Socratic method. So question leads to answer leads to question and the dialectic turns. So there is a sorrow in me as deep as sorrow goes. I’ve had to affirm a spirituality that acknowledges the corrosive presence of evil in the house of faith, not an easy thing to do.”

But at midlife, Berry counts himself a happy man. His messy study, an island of disorder in his lovely art- and book-filled home, is filled with books and piles of papers, mementos of a long career.

He has been sustained not only by faith and hard work, but by the richness of his personal life _ a second marriage and two daughters from his first _ Simonette, a senior at Tulane University, and Ariel, 15, who was born with Down syndrome.

When Berry talks about faith, the conversation inevitably turns to his younger daughter.

“Ariel’s existence has been a sign to me of God’s love,” he said. “When you have a child with Down syndrome with the heart and lung problems she’s had and so many hospitalizations … it really brings you to your knees. I have said many prayers for her survival, and I say prayers of thanks every morning for her presence.”

He took down a photograph of 13-month-old Ariel, beaming.

“I guess the presence of innocence like hers has had a kind of spiritual reverberation for me,” he said. “It’s hard to walk away from a faith tradition when your prayers are getting answered.”

(Susan Larson writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)

KRE/PH END LARSON

Editors: To obtain a photo of Jason Berry, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.