Cari Ann DeLamielleure | Special to The Michigan Catholic

Detroit — In mid-to late August, Patriot Media, Inc. will release local teacher and author Paul Stuligross’s second novel titled “The Donkey.”

Stuligross, a former Novi police officer, began his writing career by self-publishing his first novel, “The Birth of an Angel,” which was written under the pseudonym Paul J. Stuart. He currently teaches theology at Ladywood High School, Livonia, and is a contributing columnist to The Michigan Catholic.

During his 24-year career in law enforcement, Stuligross received the Officer of the Year award for developing and implementing a chaplain program for the police department.

“I can’t think of a job more important to have a strong faith because you’re faced with some pretty unfathomable things. You see suffering, you see people perpetrating evil on others, and if you don’t have faith then it causes you to lose hope,” Stuligross said.

In his upcoming novel, “The Donkey,” Stuligross created Dan Mertz, a likeable and humorous reporter who tends to spill his coffee and wear his hair tossed.

“Human nature is what I tried to bring into ‘The Donkey.’ The story is told through the eyes of a present-day Detroit Free Press reporter (Mertz) who has struggled through years of depreciative reporting and he has lost hope. He has seen what many police officers I know have seen,” he said.

Mertz’s character brings a comedic side to the story until an assignment introduces him to Claire Henning, who is turning 100 years old and tries to get him to discuss his life.

Through her story, Henning guides Mertz back to rural Michigan in the 1920s, at a time of drought and haunting memories of World War I. Despite the hardships the Henning family faces, they find the light in a dark tunnel when they inherit a donkey Claire believes to have been once ridden by Christ.

The donkey has a particular attraction to a statue of Christ and shows concern for the only black farmer, Wilson Washington, which leads Henning to believe the donkey was sent by God. Based on the criteria the Church uses for canonizing, Henning begins to search for three miracles to prove the truth of the donkey.

Shedding a small element of truth to fiction, Stuligross said he loosely based Claire’s father on his own grandfather, who was part of the North Russia Expeditionary Forces, commonly known as the American Polar Bears.

Originally ordered to guard military stores and supplies, the American Polar Bears battled the Bolsheviks in sub-zero conditions, according to Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources archives.

Stuligross said he got his idea for “The Donkey” from biblical movies popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

“I was a really big fan of biblical epic movies, and what I always found powerful about those films was you never saw Jesus. You would see what He left behind and people’s reactions to him. As I kid, it was powerful and made me think that I want to know this guy more,” Stuligross said.

“You’re telling people a story and allowing them to make a decision if it is God or not,” he continued, explaining that the story does better if the audience has a choice.

When he began slating his upcoming book, a friend suggested Stuligross turn it into a screenplay, and after completing a creative writing course, he composed “The Donkey” as a script. It was soon picked up by Buoy22 Films and Motive Entertainment, which leads in marketing and distributing faith-based films such as “The Chronicles of Narnia,” he said.

“I did it in reverse, but not by design,” Stuligross explained in his decision for writing the screenplay initially.

“The Donkey” will be available to purchase through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and patriotmediainc.com.