Visiting Time Out Bookstore from Canada, Alan J Cooper considers our nature and culture by looking at power and conflict in people’s action, and through his erudite interpretation of emotional and intellectual tensions in society, he explores the nature of “belief”...

By way of the book’s diary-style entries we follow the protagonist, a vibrant French Canadian, Chantelle, who promotes a spirituality based on principles and not traditional dogma.

Embracing her activism she moves across the U.S. and Canada, engaging the complex ideologies that shape politics, religion, and spirituality, as she tries to balance her rocky romance with an aspiring half-Jewish architect while continuing her embrace with activism, and a connection to a New York organization with a hate-based agenda kept secret from her.

But while Chantelle’s spirituality roots her beliefs, we see the “religious” more frequently lean toward evil over good...

The Second is a work of profound and moving secular spirituality that touches all the markers of religion, a modern-day American Gothic in which the novel’s characters ultimately confront their individual identities through the realization of just how hard it is to make belief believable.

My published true story is BRAIN INJURY by Alan J Cooper, after being struck by an impaired driver. My published novel is The SECOND, illustrating the difference between spirituality and religion. There is a 5-minute video at www.alanjcooper.com. I am working on the third.