In a poignant memoir flush with humor and regret, the author looks back on the curious journey which brought him to a high school seminary on the University of Notre Dame campus in 1964 to study for the priesthood. There, in the boarding schools cloistered setting, each day was occupied by prayer, studies, silence, and labor, providing a straight and narrow path to ordination. Still, his better angels were unable to distance him from juvenile lapses, ranging from mindless mischief to egregious misconduct. Spotting the troublemaker, the priests bestowed absolution and encouragement, but after two years, the clerics had seen enough. Expulsion and banishment followed, pushing him into the cold embrace of secular society. Years later, he returned to the same campus to conclude his educational sojournthis time in the prestigious law school. With the benefit of maturity and hindsight, the author reflects on the failings of his past and the lessons learned.

Already a bestseller with more than 100,000 copies sold, Adams' comforting words are now accompanied by D. Morgan's exquisite watercolors that summon the very sounds and scents of the ocean. Words of wisdom and peaceful images bring encouragement to those buffeted by life's storms.

Learn to trust God and follow God's Word, in the middle of your mess, and he can turn your mess into a message. "Your word is a lamp to my foot, and a light to my roadway" (Psalm 119:105).

Beach Time is a powerful collection of stories weaving a tapestry of the shore as a place of reflection, a sanctuary for addressing life's challenges and opportunities, and as a point of departure for life's many journeys. Whether finding romance among the canals and lanes of magical Venice, facing life, death, and ghosts along the Carolina coasts, honeymooning in the south of Portugal, or solving mysteries in the Greek isles, the stories will hold your interest across the miles and years. Additional tales speak to youth's desire to find direction in life, whether in the beach towns of Florida, at a Buddhist shine on Cheju Island, Korea, or along the North Shore of Oahu. Darker tales reveal how outcasts prey upon the young or confused in the chaos of the beach. Beach Time (by the author of Hues of Tokyo) can be read straight through, engaging the themes linking the stories, or each story can be cherished individually as you travel to multiple shores in the US, Asia, and Europe-to be entertained by whimsical tales that both amuse and provoke deep thought about life's relationship with that in-between space where the land meets the sea and the sky.