The author believed, “God had to beat me in the head with a two by four until I finally surrendered.” Raised to understand his family’s expectations – the same ones that later weighed on him, when he saw how far he’d wandered off the path, those seeds, planted earlier, helped him find his way back to who he was and from where he had came.
This is one man’s quest to understand his relationship with God – even when alcoholism devoured his mind, body and family. Reading like a 21st century version of the once-controversial novel, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ – complete with teenage angst and alienation, this is a look through the gauze of a family’s history and it’s impact on how it all came together for him to survive.
Growing up in church, there was no tobacco or alcohol. There was plenty of fishing, peach pie, watermelon and homemade ice cream and God – all mixed with New Orleans’ life and music, confusion over Vietnam, the deaths of MLK and RFK, and Richard Nixon’s disgrace, along with sports, sex, drinking and drugs.
Frank Shaw is an attorney who specializes in admiralty and maritime law; he's a partner in the firm of Leger & Shaw. He was born in New Orleans, LA and received his BS at Louisiana State University and his legal education from Louisiana State University Law Center, where he was a research assistant, graduating with Juris Doctor. He has been practing for the past 27 years, and has argued in some of the most important cases dealing with the oil and gas industry's off-shore rigs.
A family man, Shaw is a husband and father of seven sons. In addition to his busy law practice, Shaw makes time to serve his community as an Elder at Three Rivers Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Covington,Louisiana. He also volunteers his time coaching football, baseball, and track. In his spare time, Shaw likes to study theology.
Frank is a recovering alcoholic and his struggle with sobriety and his faith and his sincere desire to be a beacon for his sons, drove him to write the manuscript which became "Signals of Transcendence." It was during the completion of the final draft of the mansuscript that his oldest son, Fletcher, died of a drug overdose, while attending LSU.