The Girl in the Mountains by K. Alex Walker
Summer 1977 – New York City. BEN DIDN’T KNOW WHY HIS EDITOR WAS CURRENTLY GIVING him shit. He’d asked him to write the news. It was what The Daily had hired him to do. So why was he on the verge of being fired because of a piece he’d written about the rise of the Church of Scientology? This was Pulitzer-level shit. He’d nearly gotten the gold two times already, but Mears and Miller had beaten him by a hair. However, both men had more than deserved the recognition. Growing up a staunch Catholic, religion had always intrigued him. It had also made him wary of the institution. So when he’d heard about a “new” religion exploding in the state of Florida that wasn’t really new at all, to him, it had seemed like information worthy of national news.