The Dark Path: A Memoir - Softcover

David Schickler is the author of the bestselling story collection Kissing in Manhattan and the novel Sweet and Vicious. He is the cocreator and executive producer of the Cinemax series Banshee. He lives in New York.

Since he was a young boy, Schickler (Kissing in Manhattan, 2001) grappled with twin desires, to become a Catholic priest and to revel in the company of women. Raised in a staunch Catholic family in upstate New York, he first sensed God along “the dark path” that meandered through the woods behind his house. He posed many questions to Him/Her, often about the women he was dating. “Dear God, will (insert current girlfriend’s name here) be my wife?” Schickler’s conflict of conscience intensified in college, where he engaged in serious inquiry about becoming a Jesuit, all the while dating women with various degrees of faith. After graduation, he took a job teaching at a prep school in Vermont, where a troubled student and crippling leg pain only added to his malaise. He began seeing a psychiatrist but long resisted taking his prescribed antidepressants. As time went on, Schickler wondered if he would ever find the path, dark or light, that would be right for him. Full of pathos and humor, Schickler’s memoir explores just what it means to feel love and have faith. --Allison Block