New & noteworthy: 'The Year of My Humiliation'

Winner of the 2026 Association of Catholic Publishers' Award for Fiction

On May 29, 2026, the Association of Catholic Publishers (ACP) announced its Excellence in Publishing Awards, recognizing new books in 18 categories. Later this month, the Catholic Media Association (CMA) will announce its 2026 Book Awards at a conference in Atlantic City.

Every year since 2023, when my own novel won a CMA award, I scroll through these lists, note several books I’d like to read, and promptly forget about them as the next rogue wave of real life rolls in. It’s easy for these worthy books, many of them put out by small presses, to disappear from public view after their moment in the sun.

At the risk of stating the obvious, small-press Catholic fiction has a discoverability problem. Post-publication, its shoestring publishers can only do so much. They’re often writers themselves, busy with their own projects, their own hustle. Above them sits a more-or-less mainstream reviewer tier that’s rarely interested in small press books; if so, it’s usually through personal connections. Most indie novelists have day jobs and/or families and don’t have much time to network and self-promote. As a result, many interesting Catholic novels fall through the cracks. Online, where all the action is, the curation layer is missing, and there is little curiosity about the writers as people.

Yet, they have managed an extraordinary thing: putting new Catholic literature into the world in the head-spinning 2020s.

The former journalist in me is interested in small press authors, the unsung heroes of the Catholic fiction scene (which is only going to get bigger, as everyone is tired of nihilistic slop). So occasionally, in Craft + Practice, I’ll be talking about their novels and asking about their process, if they’re game. My working motto, with apologies to Gandhi, is “Be the content you wish to see in the world.”

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The Year of My Humiliation by C. J. Sursum was published by Lilyfield Press, “a Nashville-based independent publisher dedicated to literary fiction grounded in the Catholic faith.” I purchased it (for a mere $3.99 on Kindle) after seeing dozens of positive reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. This warm reception for a micropress-published novel was impressive.

The narrator is a pediatric plastic surgeon, around forty years old, named Michael. He is an expert at normalizing the faces of children misshapen by burns, trauma, or birth defects. Yet, in his personal life, Michael is no hero. He is an arrogant, cruel man who terrorizes his rather simple-minded wife, to whom he’s chronically unfaithful. His adult son hasn’t spoken to him in years. The only person he treats decently is gone: his four-year-old daughter, killed in an accident whose details are vague.

Facial surgery in progress. Photo courtesy of Richard V. Balikian, MD, FACS

The novel takes the form of Michael’s diary for one year, starting shortly after his daughter’s death. On Day 1, we find him gritting his teeth as he forces himself to make his wife, Rosie, a cup of tea. Few novels explore the depths of marital contempt like this one, as Michael regards his wife as an annoying imbecile who roped him into marriage with an unplanned pregnancy. Though he adored her long ago, he can barely remember why. Michael blames Rosie for the accident and is enacting a strange plan to abase himself—to her, of all people—in order to spite God by outdoing him in the servant department, besting him at his own insufferable game.

Michael is, in fact, psychologically unravelling, and this grandiose scheme is the form his grief takes. At work, he’s forced to have his mental state assessed by a female psychiatrist, Dr. Thurman—whom, unlike Rosie, he can’t push around—before he’s allowed back in the operating room. As Dr. Thurman forces him to confront his memories, we come to understand, little by little, why he’s so critical and angry: an archeological dig skillfully folded into the present narrative.

Michael’s troubled backstory doesn’t let him off the hook, however. He is a bad husband and father, despite his half-hearted attempts to improve. The question is whether he can redeem himself in any way. Over the course of the year, events take unexpected turns, and Michael’s cynical, God-taunting project to divest himself of pride is taken out of his hands. Humility is God’s lesson for him, not the other way around. But the silver filament of Michael’s love for his daughter—the one unruined thing— may somehow lead him out of the abyss.

At times, The Year of My Humiliation verges on the didactic, as when Michael starts reading the Bible, and it may not be to every reader’s taste. But as a window into the mindset of a man who habitually mistreats others, especially within his own family, it’s phenomenal. Michael’s evasions, rationalizations, and projections almost make sense—he is, after all, highly intelligent—but he is foiled by the good people around him, including some very patient women and a sensitive male colleague. A comprehensive picture emerges of Michael’s predicament, his suffering, even as he causes suffering in others. There is real darkness in Michael, but it’s portrayed in a broader context of charity and hope.

This fine new novel will stay with me a long time, and, like many small press Catholic novels, it deserves more readers.