The Talisman Cock , debut novel from award winning poet and short fiction writer Henry Joseph Russell, follows sixteen-year-old David Smith, a talented cross country runner from Cape Cod who believes he's living his "Personal Destiny" when he earns a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school near Boston. Alas, David's new roommate, a notoriously womanizing and wildly confident ice hockey prodigy named Johnny Connolly, doesn't believe in Destiny. A sort of metaphysical libertarian (and libertine ), Johnny claims "Jesus powers" of meditation and visualization have helped him fashion his...