Books

Author Bio


"Men have forgotten God; that's why all this happened."
-Aleksander Solzhenitsyn


Andrew McNabb-Writer


"The modern world needs redemption; and redemption means a return to Nazareth,"
-Father Vincent McNabb

Reviews & Interviews

Contact Andrew


New

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Andrew's newest book, Walking with Father Vincent, will be published in late 2023 by Gracewing Publishers (U.K.).  

Andrew McNabb grew up in Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and New York University. Andrew is a Lay Dominican, and the great-grandnephew of Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP, one of the 20th century's truly great men.  He lives in Maine. ​​

Walking with Father Vincent  is a montage of anecdotes, clippings, thoughts and insights centering around the remarkable life of Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., (d. 1943), perhaps the best-known Dominican Friar of the twentieth century.  A fixture on the streets of London for decades, Father Vincent was an ascetic and a prophet, a theologian and a writer, a teacher and a preacher, a debater and a Thomist and, to many, quite possibly, a saint. 

Holding forth weekly from the platform of the Catholic Evidence Guild at Hyde Park, Father Vincent professed Truth in a manner all his own.  Known for his worn Dominican habit, his heavy-booted trudging and his many capabilities, he was considered by G.K. Chesterton, “spiritually the greatest man in England at this time.” He engaged in debate with the likes of G.B. Shaw.  He sought the advancement of Distributism and the Catholic Land Movement.  He was outspoken in his defense of the unborn, and against contraception, at a time when these were just emerging problems.  He was ardently pro-family. 

Not without controversy and even, at times, contradiction, Father Vincent was frequently misunderstood, and even derided as a showman and an eccentric.  But above all, he was a joyful lover—of the Lord and his fellow man—and his life is testimony to that; this priest who, more than anything, as his biographer wrote, “Wanted to bring an erring world to its senses before it was too late.”  Sadly, the world that he warned about is here. 

Written in brief, readable segments by Father Vincent’s great-grandnephew, an American Lay Dominican and writer, who infuses his own experiences and gives great insight into the role of family—the McNabb family, and the family in general—
Walking with Father Vincent presents a remedy, of sorts, to our contemporary problems.  Through the vehicle of Father Vincent’s legendary walking, the author invites the reader to accompany them both, as he brings current the timeless truth and prophetic insight his great granduncle preached about, wrote about, and lived so dramatically. 


Walking with Father Vincent is a story needed now more than ever, a story of great personal holiness and devotion, a life of love fostered in a deeply Catholic home, a life lived with joy and vigor, bravely, and unflinchingly, for the purpose of saving souls, and in defense of eternal Christian Truth.  

8 Days & Virtue

A Spiritual Memoir and Prose Poem


"In 8 Days, Andrew McNabb recounts the ecstatic mystical religious experiences that took place in his life over an eight day period in 2011.  With literary attention, this career short story writer, husband, and father of four details how he was swept up into a place "not quite here" and "not quite there," a place in which he experienced both the ethereal and the terrifying, the awe-inspiring and the confounding.

Virtue is the book-length prose poem, or mystical prayer, that was the catalyst to the author's experiences."

Recent Writings


Read Andrew's meditation, The Battle of Earthly Life, here.  

Read Andrew's meditation, The Right Wayhere

Read Andrew's meditation, Against Falseness, Against Fakeness, he​re. 

The Body of This
A Short Story Collection


(N.B.: recently re-released in paperback, with four new stories and an introduction by Katy Carl.)


"Every now and then the real thing [McNabb] comes along: a Catholic writer who writes well enough to satisfy literate readers who judge fiction by the canons of fiction, not theology.  You recognize him not by his profession of faith...but by his well-crafted works of fiction infused with a sacramental intelligence."     

--DEAL HUDSON, Author, Onward Christian Soldiers and An American Conversion

"Andrew McNabb's thought-jabbing vignettes can be as radically transforming as viniculture, turning the water of everyday experience into the wine of life."
-JOSEPH PEARCE, Author, The Quest for Shakespeare


"The Body of This is a tough little bundle of shards that can as easily cut and make you bleed as it can reflect the one true light...Andrew McNabb is a brave storyteller."
-BRET LOTT, Author, OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK, Jewel


"...exquisite..." (in Standpoint Magazine, U.K.)
-PIERS PAUL READ, Author, Alive

Listen to Roy Schoeman, author of Salvation is from the Jews, interview Andrew on his weekly radio show on Radio Maria. 

Read Dan Burke's recommendation of 8 Days & Virtue at SpiritualDirection.com​

​Listen to Andrew's interview at Church & Culture on Ave Maria Radio


Reviews of The Body of This:
 
Crisis Magazine, Dappled Things, The Short ReviewRelief JournalNew Blackfriars Review, Bobz Book ReviewsThe Weekly SentinelA Catholic Mom Climbing the Pillars, Maine Sunday Telegram (4/12/09), Fr. Robert Barron's Word on Fire (10/10), Gilbert Magazine (Jul/Aug 2009), Portland Press Herald (4/2/09), The Catholic Herald (U.K.) (2009)

Interviews:  
The Fine Delight, "The Back Cover," Catholic Radio International; Dappled Things, "Obsessed with What's Next,"; Word of Mouth, New Hampshire Public Radio; This is The Day, CatholicTV; Reading with Robin (WHJJ, Providence, RI); Son Rise Morning Show (Sacred Heart Radio, Cincinnati), Reading of Select Stories: "Cover to Cover," Catholic Radio International

Panel Discussion of The Body of This: 
"Cover to Cover," Catholic Radio Int'l, (panelists: Matthew Lickona, Katy Carl and Joseph O'Brien)

Discussion Podcast
The Craft of Writing in Maine (Maine Humanities Podcast with Lewis Robinson and Lisa Carey)