A Divine Comedy: The Sacred and Profane Journey of Tom Spotted Tail Augustine Stearns

Set in Tours, France, Los Angeles, and Europe in 1985, A Divine Comedy: The Sacred and Profane Journey of Tom Spotted Tail Augustine Stearns is a Native American coming-of-age novel, whose themes are faith, romance, and self-discovery. During his junior year abroad, the main character, Tom Spotted Tail Augustine Stearns, a Stanford undergraduate, mixed-blood Lakota Indian, and conservative Roman Catholic, turns to his faith to help him face and address the pressing issues of his day: race, class, religion, nationality, sexuality, and AIDS. In the course of this classic 1980's tale of sex, money, and fast living, Tom finds himself deep in the proverbial Dantean woods of sin, seduced by all that glitters but is not gold, on a pilgrimage of descent, refinement, and purification. This mystical journey of nonlinear spiritual ascent results in a continually deeper conversion of heart, a process that frees Tom to be true to himself, one with God, and a human being of love.

Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr., is a Native American of mixed ancestry — Anglo-Irish, French, German, and Lakota. He is a landed member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. His family relocated from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation to California in the early 1960's, where he was born, nurtured, and educated. This autobiographical, coming-of-age novel is Mr. Leighton's third book.