Shawn Kerivan is a writer, teacher, and innkeeper in Northern Vermont. He teaches English and creative writing at Community College of Vermont. His first book, the short story collection Name the Boy, was published in 2007. His most recent book is a memoir of innkeeping called The Innkeeper's Husband. It's available through Amazon as a Kindle download.
<p><em style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;">After centuries of religiously motivated war, the world has been split in two. Now the Blessed Lands are ruled by pure faith, while in the Republic, reason is the guiding light—two different realms, kept apart and at peace by a treaty and an ocean.</em><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><span style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;">Children of the Republic, Helena and Jason were inseparable in their youth, until fate sent them down different paths. Grief and duty sidetracked Helena’s plans, and Jason came to detest the hollowness of his ambitions.</span><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><span style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;">These two damaged souls are reunited when a tiny boat from the Blessed Lands crashes onto the rocks near Helena’s home after an impossible journey across the forbidden ocean. On board is a single passenger, a nine-year-old girl named Kailani, who calls herself “the Daughter of the Sea and the Sky.” A new and perilous purpose binds Jason and Helena together again, as they vow to protect the lost innocent from the wrath of the authorities, no matter the risk to their future and freedom.</span><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><br style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;" /><span style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;line-height:17.563634872436523px;">But is the mysterious child simply a troubled little girl longing to return home? Or is she a powerful prophet sent to unravel the fabric of a godless Republic, as the outlaw leader of an illegal religious sect would have them believe? Whatever the answer, it will change them all forever… and perhaps their world as well.</span></p>
Read what others are saying about Name the Boy:<br /><br /><br />Shawn Kerivan’s Name the Boy is an emotionally raw, often cathartic collection of short stories about brotherly love, brotherly rage, and the sins of the fathers. The combination of a delightfully droll voice and a hairpin storytelling style can give you the shivers. This is a highly accomplished literary debut.<br /><br />~Richard Panek, author, Waterloo Diamonds, The Invisible Century and Seeing and Believing,<br /><br /><br />Name the Boy is peopled with boys trying to find their way in uncertain, unpredictable and sometimes-malevolent family and socio/economic settings. These stories, primarily of working people, of poverty, of alcohol, of violence, circle around and around the complex matrix of father/son relationships. Shawn knows that we are not disembodied people, that we are created by our work, our worlds, our social status, and by the natural world around us, and all of that is right here in the stories, more or less causative yet always important, always central, always the context within which the often awful human drama plays itself out. <br /><br />~Nicola Morris, Ph.D.<br /><br /><br />Name the Boy will shake you. These eleven short stories bear witness to fathers and sons. There are horrors in this book and love that lives in a wide-open hand. These stories have changed the way I see things. Kerivan’s people move into your head and stay. Their dialogue is relevant and their situations are both singular and familiar. Shawn Kerivan is the man to watch.<br /><br />~Nancy McCurry, MFAW, Freelance Editor<br />