Let It Be At That - Bob Allen - Bog

The year is 1970. The place is an Irish Catholic working class neighborhood in the south side of Chicago. The parish of St. Justin Martyr. Gary "Weezer" O'Donnell is about to enter the eighth grade and feels that it is time to put away childish things and to start exploring the process of growing up. But he has questions. Many questions.

Father Tom Mallon has returned to St. Justin after some financial misfeasance at his prior church assignment. He grew up in the parish almost two decades earlier. Both of his parents had died while he was young and he found himself living with his Uncle Wally, a kind man who made his living collecting gambling debts in the neighborhood. Through Uncle Wally, both Tom and his best friend, Freddy Gallagher, acquiescence the ways and means of the gambling world, yet Tom keeps his promise to his mother and becomes a priest. But old habits die hard and Tom has his own set of questions.

It is then that the paths of Father Mallon and Weezer O'Donnell cross in fateful and ironic ways that leave each of them satisfied that sometimes your questions can't be answered and you just have to let it be at that.