NAPLES, Fla. (OSV News) — Inspired by the enthusiasm and innate wisdom of his 12-year-old son, Antony Barone Kolenc fills a critical void in reading material for high school students that is exciting, compelling, and grounded in faith. and life-changing.
“Mainstream publishing today is aimed at our teenagers and does not promote the type of Christian values that most Christian families I know want their children to internalize,” Kolenc said. “As Catholic parents, we are all concerned about religion, marriage and life issues, which can be countercultural for our children. I can only hope that at an important developmental age we are passing on something they love and will have an impact throughout their lives.
Kolenc became aware of the lack of quality fiction for middle schoolers when his son was in middle school and asked him, “How can I write a book with a modern feel, but without controversy or promoting values that Christian parents don't believe in?” would not approve?
He and his son “determined that the book should be a mystery adventure that included history and faith and written in a way that was accessible to modern teenagers.”
The last of Kolenc's middle grade books is “Penny and the Stolen Chalice.” Recently released by OSV Kids, it contains all the recommended items.
It's a mysterious adventure: Penny is a non-Catholic who has just entered sixth grade at a Catholic school and suddenly a fire alarm during mass causes the chalice to disappear. She and her friend Jayden, an altar server, team up to solve the mystery. This includes history and faith – because Penny is not Catholic, she and the reader learn the meaning of the chalice, the Eucharist, and the mass in order to understand and decipher the clues. And it’s life-changing – Penny prays for help for her father who died the year before – but no spoiler alert here.
“This book gave me the opportunity to think even more deeply about the Eucharist,” Kolenc said. “Many of Penny's thoughts in the book were inspired by my own thoughts over the years. And as Penny recognizes that the students are not paying attention to Mass, I hope the reader will also be challenged to think about what this means for their own lives. I want young people to understand how much God loves them by reaching out to them in the Eucharist.
As Kolenc suggests, readers also enter into the life of its author as he weaves together loss, his strong Catholic faith, and the search for God's will for his own life.
“My father suffered a second fatal heart attack on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1981, leaving my mother to raise three children. I was 12 years old, the youngest,” Kolenc told OSV News. “The length of time I wish my mother became an unconscious concern and found its way into my writing.”
He explained that there was a chapel at school that he visited alone during lunch hours, praying and reading spiritual material, contemplating what God wanted for his life.
“This is how my teen fiction reads: loss and God’s will for our lives,” he said.
After a Catholic elementary and high school education and two years of college, Kolenc enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, was sent to law school, became a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps, and after 21 years of service , retired as a lieutenant colonel. He taught on the faculties of three law schools before joining the faculty of the Ave Maria Law School in Naples in August 2022, where he created and directs the Veterans and Military Legal Clinic. He married his high school sweetheart, Alisa, and they were blessed with five children, whom they homeschooled, and now three grandchildren.
“I’ve always been a writer, I used to write stories when I was a kid,” Kolenc said. “When I speak at schools, I often show students my college yearbook and my writings to encourage them to write. I have written short stories that have been published and, of course, writing is the most important skill for lawyers. I have written journal articles and a casebook for law schools. However, I have always written on the side.
Kolenc, who also writes a column for Practical Homeschooling Parents Magazine, credits the support, encouragement and teaching of so many others during his publishing career, especially on the national level. Catholic Writers Guildor CWG.
“Every good thing that has happened to me in writing fiction has happened through and through” the guild, he said.
In 2012, Kolenc was living in Jacksonville, Florida, and joined the St. John's Chapter of the St. Augustine Diocese of the CWG, where he was instrumental in the guild's success, helping beginning writers develop their skills and learn the tools for successful publishing.
It was at an annual CWG conference that Kolenc met the acquisitions editor of Loyola Press, which publishes his Harwood Mysteries. He also met Rebecca Martin, who was then an intern at the university, and became familiar with her books. Now OSV's acquisitions editor, Martin contacted Kolenc to write “Penny and the Stolen Chalice” for the National Eucharistic Revival, an initiative of American Catholic bishops to renew devotion to the Eucharist. He will moderate the next one CWG Annual Conference May 28-30.
The Harwood Mysteries series has won 14 awards. Each book has won a first prize and is recognized in the Catholic, Christian and secular press.
“When I hear parents say, ‘My child is reading a book for the 10th time,’ it’s children who read and reread and the child internalizes, ‘What does God want for my life?’” , Kolenc said. “It’s optimistic to think that this will have an impact on lives.”
Laura Dodson writes for OSV News from Florida.
