The Saint Patrick's Day Hero

"The Saint Patrick's Day Hero is the remarkable portrait of a man tormented by his secrets, a story so engrossing and well written that I never wanted it to end." 

—Beryl Bissell, best-selling author of The Scent of God and A View of the Lake 


"A heartbreaking and powerfully relevant story." 

—Pacific Book Review 


"The Saint Patrick's Day Hero will leave you thinking long after the story concludes. It is highly recommended for readers who enjoy novels having genuine intellectual heft." 

—Midwest Book Review 


On March 17, 2010—Saint Patrick's Day—fifty-seven people at Lothrup College in north-central Minnesota are killed in a campus shooting, many of them because they did not receive the college's active-shooter alert in time. When Professor William Kessler, the shooting's reluctant hero, discovers that Lothrup botched the alert and is now engaged in a cover-up, his first impulse is to come forward. But if he does, there will be grievous consequences, and his terrible secret—the truth about what really happened that day—will be revealed. 


Both funny and terrifying, The Saint Patrick's Day Hero is a captivating mash-up of genres: a beautiful love story, a gripping mystery and a novel of ideas all rolled into one. 


Doug Mayfield lives in northern Minnesota. The Saint Patrick's Day Hero is his second novel. His award-winning first novel, Angle of Declination, was published in 2012.