The shepherd of princes

by mike bonikowsky

illustrations by sarah christolini

In a ruined future where the only currency is strength, a small community struggles to maintain a place for weakness. But when a mysterious electric light appears in the southern sky, a young caregiver must leave the only home he has ever known in an effort to save that home. What he finds will call into question the nature of survival itself. The Shepherd of Princes is a novel about what it means, and what it costs, to care for another person. It is a meditation on the gifts that those who seem to have nothing can offer their society, and of the price that is to be paid when those gifts are refused.

praise for the shepherd of princes

A thought-provoking journey that weaves narrow strands of brotherly love and hope through the mire of selfishness, doubt, fear, and desperation. Bonikowsky creates a world that immediately consumes you with the weight of moral responsibility, and allows the reader to contemplate what it means to care for others above yourself when self-sacrifice is directly challenged by self-preservation. A unique dystopian tale worth reading.

— VERONICA MCDONALD, editor of Heart of Flesh Literary Journal

A haunting tale of a caregiver’s heart amidst the fall and rise of civilizations. Mike Bonikowsky expertly captures the nuances of a community where people with and without developmental disabilities work, worship, and live alongside one another. This harrowing, but thrilling, quest challenges the protagonist and reader alike to examine their values and worldview.

— JASMINE DUCKWORTH, disability advocate and accessibility trainer

The world that Bonikowsky has built inside and outside the Fold is itself a character, both singing of undeniably permanent beauty and crying for the revealing of long-suppressed justice. Every step of Micah’s cross-country pilgrimage towards death or salvation is at once breathtaking and heart-wrenching in the midst of poignantly developed characters caught up in the deep, pulsing question: Who truly are “the least of these” and what does it mean to leave everything behind—even oneself—for the sake of leading them? Every now and then, we’re touched by a story that both takes us out of ourselves and also plunges us painfully deeper into our own conflictingly selfish hearts. From both places—above and within—The Shepherd of Princes refuses to let us remain indifferent to the injustices that characterize the lives of those “at the bottom” of a problematic social pecking order, instead asking us to consider the limits of human kindness and where we will go when its rations are gone. Woven through a masterfully rendered story and fiercely real characters made of heart, whimsy, grit, and pig sausage, Bonikowsky’s tale of internal wrestling, self-sacrifice, and the bounds of love is one that will stick with you long past the logbook’s final entry.

— SHANNON BAKER, author of When the Mountains Called

Michael writes with the strange joy that can only come from the exhausted chaos of a soul set on laying down its life for another.

— CONOR SWEETMAN, editor of Ekstasis Magazine by Christianity Today

about the author