Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Br. Chris Sweeney, SC, published "Ride for Reid: 6,000 Miles for Love, Faith, and Family," documenting a cross-country cycling expedition undertaken to raise awareness and support for his nephew Reid, who has Down syndrome. The book is out now through Covenant Books.

Sweeney, a member of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart for 34 years, rode from Florida’s coast to California’s redwood forests, a route the book describes as roughly six thousand miles. According to the publisher’s description, the trip included searing heat, freezing cold, mechanical breakdowns, saddle sores and a crash just miles from the finish.

Before the ride, Sweeney spent decades teaching in Catholic high schools across Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, followed by twelve years as a missionary in Mozambique, where he worked on farming projects, grant writing and feeding boarding students at his school. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in Catholic School Leadership from the University of San Francisco.

The publisher describes the book as combining travelogue, memoir, and spiritual reflection with candid observations on faith and encounters with strangers during the journey. "Every mile reminded me that we are never truly alone, and that love is the most powerful fuel on any journey," Sweeney said, according to the announcement.

"Ride for Reid" is available through Covenant Books and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and the Apple iTunes Store.

Studio CarryOnHarry sees this as part of a familiar but durable genre, the faith-driven endurance memoir, and one where the specificity of Sweeney’s own background, missionary work, decades of teaching, a family motive, gives it more grounding than most.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.

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Edward Williams has published his debut novel, "Midland Fair," a work of historical fiction that opens in the fictional Reisenthal Valley, where the Manrovii people have lived in isolation for a thousand years. According to the publisher’s description, the story turns on one young man’s decision to leave that refuge, a choice that sets off a generational saga following the Murphy family as it moves through more than a century of American history.

The novel’s scope, as described by the publisher, runs from the building of the Erie Canal through the settling of the Illinois frontier, into the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the labor unrest at the Pullman Company that followed soon after. That stretch of history put the Pullman strike at the center of one of the largest labor disputes of the era, and the World’s Fair itself drew more than 27 million visitors to Chicago, a detail that gives a sense of the backdrop Williams is working against.

Williams was born in New Jersey and studied at the University of Oklahoma, where the publisher’s announcement says his interest in literature and history developed. He traveled extensively through the United States and Europe as a young man, experience the announcement credits with shaping the novel’s scope. He began writing the book after retiring.

"This book represents my attempt to capture how individual choices ripple across generations and reshape entire families," Williams said in the announcement. "I wanted to explore the intersection of personal ambition and historical inevitability through characters whose struggles and triumphs feel entirely human."

The publisher describes the novel as merging the voice of a classical Victorian novelist with the sweeping scope of an epic saga, examining themes of contingency and destiny—the lives we inherit versus those we actively forge. "Midland Fair," published through Fulton Books, is available at bookstores and through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and the Apple iTunes Store.

Studio CarryOnHarry will be curious whether a debut built on this much historical ground, the Erie Canal to Pullman, can sustain the intimacy of a family story across that span, or whether the history ends up carrying more weight than the characters.

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