To Never See Heaven

<p>To Never See Heaven opens with the protagonist Antony</p><p>Shrader agonizing over his decision to write a commencement speech</p><p>traditionally given by his husband. This year is different. His lover is</p><p>dying. In order to bring himself to do this speech Antony must look</p><p>back at the pages of his own life that have brought him to fulfill this</p><p>duty. After all a commencement is not the end. It is the beginning.</p><p></p><p>Antony's story begins as a gay teenager born into privilege.</p><p>However Antony's sensitive nature and unresolved traumas had</p><p>convinced him that he had lived a past life as a suffering poet. He</p><p>believed that the inevitable separation from his family and their elitist</p><p>world was his chance to redeem himself from beyond a world he knew.</p><p>Antony could not shake these feelings of his fated doom and loneliness.</p><p>To escape this void he would flee to study in Paris either to rise to the</p><p>true destiny of his life or to lay down his body where he felt the true</p><p>origins of his spirit had been conceived. There Antony would fall in</p><p>love but while his heart and mind flourished in Paris his body and spirit</p><p>would succumb to addiction; the demons of his past life came to haunt</p><p>him. In the process of trying to outrun himself his fall into the darkness</p><p>inevitably brings him to humility and true healing. There he found what</p><p>he had needed most his own love and acceptance.</p>