Introducing Love in the Fall: A Novel

by Andrew Petiprin

On June 24, 2026, Pope Leo XIV addressed a group of writers to celebrate one hundred years since the founding of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Holy See’s publishing house. You can find the whole speech here. Acknowledging “an opportune moment to reflect on the importance of books and of writing,” the Holy Father described literary expression as “an act of truth, of revelation.”

In my favorite paragraph of the speech, he explained,

“When you write stories and develop your characters, you identify with them; you grasp their points of view, their emotions, their feelings, their attitudes. This is the great training ground of humanity that you allow your readers to experience, because, in a sense, readers ‘live’ many lives in addition to their own. This helps us to discover different perspectives, to avoid treating our own views as absolute and to piece together, as in a mosaic, the outline of that truth which always transcends us.”

Pope Leo’s words are timely for me personally, as I have recently begun publishing my first novel, Love in the Fall, in serial format on Substack. Having appreciated the arts my entire life and having published books and articles about literature and cinema for many years, I finally received the gift of confidence to share my own literary work with the world. In recent years, I have become more convinced of something I have always suspected to be true – namely, fiction is a better way to engage with reality (“that truth which always transcends us”) than opinion or analysis. As Pope Leo suggests, writing and reading help us truly “live.”

As you know, we focus heavily at the Spe Salvi Institute on the arts, particularly as they relate to the mark of Christian faith that remains stamped upon Western culture. Not only are the Holy Father’s words about literature entirely in sympathy with our project; but my novel is very much an expression of the Christian humanism that Bobby Mixa and I have talked about at length on our podcasts and in articles, and which we read about in Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas. Love in the Fall is not a “Catholic” novel in the sense of modern marketing categories; but it is the work of a Catholic heart and mind.

I encourage all of you to subscribe to my Substack here so that you receive a new chapter of Love in the Fall in your inbox each week. My hope is that as I write and you read, we may experience together this “mosaic” of creation focused on “the mystery of man, and it is a great one, as seen by believers in the light of Christian revelation” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). You have the choice whether to read the novel yourself or to listen to me read it to you in a podcast format. You can download the audio version of each chapter here at my Substack, or directly via your preferred podcast platform (Apple or Spotify).

As I write this, I have already released the first four chapters, which constitute Part I of a five-part work. With these chapters, you will have a good idea what I am doing and, I think, some orientation about where the story is headed. I expect your interest will be truly piqued, and you will be eager for more.

But before you decide to subscribe, I want you to read a post that I published previously on my platform, explaining what my book is about and why I have chosen to share it online for free. Here goes:

Welcome to Love in the Fall, my debut novel, a story which, over the last few years, I have felt increasingly compelled to tell.

Let me begin this introductory post by sharing, verbatim, the synopsis of the book that I have sent to publishers (more on that process in a moment):

Set in the aftermath of 9/11, Love in the Fall tells the story of Daniel Perrin, an American who falls in love with Susan, a woman seven years older, as he arrives in England to begin graduate studies. Daniel is a spiritual seeker who is trying to escape the shadow of his brilliant, manly father, Roger. Susan is bright, beautiful, and insecure, and she struggles to balance her ambitions as a civil servant with the longings of her heart for marriage and family. Daniel and Susan begin their relationship with a hilarious run-in, the first of several consequential accidents in the novel.

Daniel quickly makes friends with a free-thinking aristocrat named Ferdi Freemantle, who welcomes Daniel into a circle of eccentrics and teaches Daniel to rethink his assumptions about society. Susan injures herself trying to get closer to Daniel, and major miscommunications ensue. Daniel wrestles with feelings for a younger woman whose family are wealthy Evangelical Christians with an agenda.

While Susan attempts to rebuild her self-confidence in her family home, Susan’s assistant, Hiba, a sensitive Pakistani-British woman, explores her own sense of belonging in an adopted culture. Like Susan, Hiba must balance her ambitions in the working world and her desire for love, which she finds with an old school friend, Amir Khan, who has disturbing ties to terrorists.

Roger is a retired police officer who experiences a run of bad luck that suddenly turns to good, and he decides to abandon his life in the States and strike out abroad. When Daniel and Roger have an unexpected meeting and then part ways, Daniel must decide whether to remain lost in his thoughts or take action to pursue romance. Finally, the stage is set for Daniel and Susan to be together, if the ideological violence of the new age will allow them. The conclusion is shocking.

Love in the Fall is a suspenseful romance set amid the ruins of the West. The novel invites the reader to explore ideas about the disappearing spiritual basis of reality by wandering through some significant landscapes and buildings on both sides of the Atlantic.

Love in the Fall treads new ground in our post-Truth era, paying homage to the novels of Evelyn Waugh, Tom Wolfe, Nick Hornby, and Michel Houellebecq, as well as the films of Eric Rohmer and the music of Nick Cave.

I hope this précis presents a temptation for you to read the whole thing.

Didn’t it seem like the world changed after 9/11, but in ways we haven’t fully reckoned with? Have you ever read a book that sounds like this one? In any case, consider my words so far as a start to answering the first question in the title of my post: Why a novel?

Now let me address the second question: Why here?

When someone sits down to write a novel, he naturally imagines success at the end of his labors in the form of a contract with a major publishing house. As a first-timer, he also thinks of himself as exceptional: Someone will take a chance on me, especially if I have an elite educational background, a unique set of life experiences, and a solid track record as a non-fiction author. Why should it matter if I am not writing the sort of thing that makes the New York Times best-seller list?

Not so fast.

After months of trying to get an agent to reply to your queries, you change gears. You rationalize, and then you become defensive. Eventually you grow both in confidence about the quality of your work and in your belligerence about the industry.

What do they know?

You tell yourself: Major publishing houses are part of the same soulless and ultimately anti-artistic, consumerist culture as the major movie studios. Surely a niche publisher with a noble mission is, therefore, the way to go instead. They should jump at the chance to publish something unusual. We are told there is a desperate need for art that springs from metaphysical depth in order not to moralize, relativize, sacralize, or scandalize, but rather to guide our wanderings in the ruins of the West in these still-early years of the twenty-first century.

But we inevitably run into the question of fit. With profit margins so slim, and with extreme limitations on time for editing and resources for marketing, upstart publishing outfits are no more able to take a risk than the big behemoths. With Love in the Fall, I was repeatedly told that the literary merit was there, but the fit was not right. (In the interest of full transparency, I was also told by one small publisher that the message was right but the literary quality was lacking).

Thus, what do they know either?

I ask this question of both the big boys and small-timers in earnest, not in derision. I do not envy their task. Art is complicated. It is nearly impossible to know how to evaluate whether to invest in something before it has been more widely received. It is an old chicken and egg problem.

But here’s the thing: I know. I really do.

In the past, I have made a modest reputation for myself and even accumulated a small income evaluating other people’s books, films, and music. At the risk of opening myself to the criticism of a doctor who trusts himself with his own treatment or a lawyer who chooses to state his own case, I believe I am as good a judge of anyone’s storytelling as there is, including my own. Love in the Fall is as well-written and entertaining as any contemporary work of fiction you could pick up at your local book shop, and I therefore have no reservations about presenting it to you in this medium.

My decision to publish Love in the Fall myself is not a last resort. It has not been that long that I’ve sought its publication through traditional channels. There are still a lot of options available to me, and some authors report that the process of breaking in can take years. Others simply shelve their first or even second efforts and finally hit on something different, then return to the earlier stuff and find a home for those words too.

The choice to use this platform and to release chapters of Love in the Fall on a blog-type platform stems rather from a prayerful assessment of what I intended to do in the first place. I want people to read my work. Period. And I don’t care if I “fit.” In fact, I don’t want to fit. Some of you may find this novel too Catholic or Christian, others not nearly enough. Some of you may read a conservative or reactionary agenda in it, whereas others will find it far too sympathetic to the blend of complex factors that have created the “multicultural” world we inhabit now. Some of you may think I make light of things that need to be taken more seriously. Others may wish I had gone for the jugular more often in social critique. I set out to present a both/and perspective not as a tepid middle way, but as a comprehensive vision, as seen through the small lens of a few people’s lives at a particularly tumultuous time. I will admit that my intention was to compose an elegy for civilization rather than an ode. But you may think differently, and I welcome you to do so.

The point is, I have a great story to share, and I want to put it out now. I absolutely love the characters I have drawn here. They have come to me as an outpouring of grace, and I have cooperated with their coming-to-be.

If I have made mistakes or if I reveal my inadequacies, I am not afraid of your judgement. And in the worst case scenario, if my confidence in my own strengths is woefully misplaced, I am content for the novel to fail publicly before your eyes rather than privately in my drawer. I expect, however, that any weaknesses in my book will be as interesting to you as the strengths are. Most of my own favorite books, films, and pieces of music work precisely this way. I may say to myself, “I love this, but if it were me, I would…” But it’s not me! Or I think about how I don’t really like something, but it still speaks to me somehow. Maybe I would like a bit more of this and a bit less of that.

In the end, we agree to receive what the artist offers. It is a sacred trust. We let art work in us, and at some point, liking or disliking it is not our main concern. The artist offers to wake us up to the real, not distract us, comfort us, or please us. Such has been the vocation of the novel for several centuries, and thus, along with the feature film, it remains. If you desire an encounter with mystery in the form of what I consider a realist work, then you have come to the right place.

I cannot wait a moment longer to give you the gift of Love in the Fall, which I wrote between October 2024 and June 2025. After I finished the final chapter, I set it aside for the rest of the summer while I began my next novel. I returned to it, tinkered with it, and started shopping it around. Then I settled on a final version of Love in the Fall that is ready for a wide audience. As I have said, that audience is you, here.

A word about delivery.

The best way to read a novel is with your eyes. The demand the author makes on the reader necessarily becomes a negotiation with him. Dwell on the words you like best. Re-read a sentence to let in sink in. Look away for a moment to contemplate, then return. Read it aloud, if you prefer. It all unfolds according to the timeline you prescribe.

But nowadays many of us also experience novels by listening to them while driving, washing dishes, walking dogs, exercising, or doing any number of things that are incompatible with the pure visual experience. For this reason, I am delighted to offer each chapter not only in print format to read on your screen, but also as a podcast (read by me) to be downloaded from your preferred platform.

Finally, perhaps I should have led with who I am; but as I am in charge here, I chose to leave my biographical details for last. Some of you know me already, and as you begin to read Love in the Fall, you may detect certain autobiographical details. I would discourage you from doing this. In the end, the characters and the situations I describe have their own life, and they are only very loosely connected to my own experiences and impressions. Who I am should not be of the greatest importance.

Having said that, people like to know who authors are, so here are a few words about me. Again, I quote directly from the document I have sent to publishers to introduce myself:

Andrew Petiprin recently completed his first novel, Love in the Fall, a coming-of-age story set in Washington D.C. and London in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He is now working on his second novel, The Thieves, a story of male friendship entangled with an art heist, set in New York during the financial crisis of 2008.

Andrew is co-author of Popcorn with the Pope: A Guide to the Vatican Film List, which won first prize at the 2024 Catholic Media Association Book Awards for “Coffee Table Books” and third prize for “Anthologies.” He is also the author of The Faith Unboxed (Catholic Answers, 2025) and Truth Matters (New Growth, 2018). He is a columnist at Catholic World Report, where he writes regularly about film, literature, and the arts. He is also host of the Ignatius Press Podcast.

From 2020-2023, Andrew was Fellow of Popular Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, where he contributed over one hundred articles and videos about faith and culture. Andrew’s review essays have also been published by The European Conservative, The American Conservative, The Catholic Herald and other outlets. He is co-founder and editor at the Spe Salvi Institute.

Andrew was the recipient of a 2001-2003 British Marshall Scholarship, which he used to complete an M.Phil. in European Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. He received the degree of M.Div. from Yale Divinity School in 2010, and he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2001 with a B.A. in French and History.

Andrew and his wife Amber currently live in the Dallas area with their two children, Alexander and Aimee.

Again, welcome to my book. It is precious to me.

I would love to know what you think of my work as you encounter each chapter over these many weeks. Even more, I would love for you to spread the word to your friends to join us in this literary experience. At last, if you are so inclined and, more importantly, if you are able, I would be delighted if the desire stirred in you to respond to this free gift from me with a gift of your own. If you come to believe Love in the Fall is the kind of thing you would otherwise pay for, I am happy to receive whatever monetary token for it that you may deem appropriate. A monthly or annual donation would be even better, rewarding me not for a single achievement but for a still-unfolding life in the arts.

At the end of your journey with Love in the Fall, stay with me for what comes next.

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