Dick Sonnichsen’s new book, “A Leaf in a Stream.”

Blue Creek Press is proud to announce the release of A Leaf In a Stream: Surviving Childhood, Catholicism, Conscription, Career and Cancer.

Author Dick Sonnichsen has had an interesting journey. He grew up in a small town in Idaho and traveled the world. Like the leaf he alludes to in the title of A Leaf In A Stream, he has suffered rapids, whirlpools and boring backwaters and also enjoyed exciting, idyllic and scenic floats through rewarding and pleasant stretches of life. In addition to his childhood and conscription into the army, he’s survived cancer — so far — parenthood — he’s raised three kids — a variety of careers —as a forester, an army intelligence agent, consultant, author and FBI Special Agent — and Catholicism.

Of them all, Catholicism might have been the biggest challenge. It was certainly the longest, as he was a practicing Catholic for all of his childhood and most of his adulthood. It wasn’t until late that he came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is not all it appears to be in some ways, and much more in others.

A Leaf In the Stream: Surviving Childhood, Conscription, Career, Cancer and Catholicism is an autobiography with a central theme of questioning traditional religious belief in general and Catholic doctrine in particular. He challenges the unapologetic and unyielding response of the Church to the pedophilia scandal, the treatment of women, and outdated dogma that has children confessing “sins” at an age where they are not really cognizant of what it means.

A Leaf In A Stream joins Dick’s previous book All Fish Have Bones as a well-researched and intelligently presented argument for the value of discarding dogmatic thinking and taking responsibility for you own happiness and well being.

The book was edited and designed by local publisher and author Sandy Compton and Blue Creek Press, with a cover designed by Jennifer Parker of Parker Design House. A Leaf In a Stream is available at www.bluecreekpress.com/books, on Amazon and will soon be available at Sandpoint bookstores.