Boy of Heaven
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
A seventeenth-century Italian orphan finds the long-lost piece of The Last Supper, missing since Dominican friars cut out a portion of the wall to connect the priory’s refectory with its kitchen. The painting has long ago dissolved, and the refectory converted to stables. The orphan boy sleeps in the stables, and he begins to have visions of the painting. Each night, the visions get clearer and clearer, until the boy sees the whole painting as Leonardo first painted it two hundred years before. But missing is the segment from the lower center of the painting, depicting the Christ’s crossed feet, which was displaced by the kitchen door. With the help of the prior, two loyal brothers, and the twelve workhorses who share the stables with the boy (and whose presence he discovers is necessary to maintain his visions), the boy finds the missing piece of wall. But danger looms for all as soldiers of the Inquisition arrive to investigate the miracles.
Endorsements (5)
“Boy of Heaven is a luminous work of magical realism. Morris Hoffman’s tight prose brings to life a cast ranging from a stableboy to an archbishop to Leonardo’s The Last Supper. As befits the most glorious fables, a humble mule gets the final word.”
“Boy of Heaven by Morris Hoffman is at one and the same time poignant, whimsical, and engaging. I found myself very drawn into the time and place (and lives) of the author’s creation. I am not usually nor easily intrigued by historical fiction, especially ecclesiastical historical fiction, but the author’s skill captured my imagination and I was entirely engaged by this novella.”
“This work tells the story of a seventeenth-century Italian orphan who happens to find a missing panel from Leonardo’s The Last Supper. It works quite well as the Leonardo mystery, as magical realism, and as fable telling. But the real gift for the reader arises from author’s one-off decision to create a language for this fable. Mr. Hoffman concocts a credible amalgam of the kind of baroque English writing that one might expect to stumble across in a dusty shelf at the British Museum of today—a book recounting a most strange occurrence in Italy during the early years of the Scientific Revolution. The boy’s story here dwells in the world of seventeenth-century Italy, and its attendant Catholicity. A world of bishops, brothers, friars, and nuns. A world of ancient superstition, casual brutality, and magic. A world which was soon to run headlong into Newton and Galileo. What a perfect interlude for this visit to an unforgettable boy and his tiny remuda of magical horses.”
“This level of craftmanship is a rare find . . . . I found myself not only enjoying the story but also appreciating the profound joy it brought to my soul.”
“This poignant story illustrates how miracles abound in the everyday and in unexpected places.”
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