Duquesne University President publishes legal thriller

Oct. 10—Fans of legal thrillers can add a new title to their nightstand.

Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University, is poised to join the fraternity of legal eagles who have taken up the novelist's pen with the release of his first novel, "The Heiress of Pittsburgh," Sunbury Press, $19.95. It comes out Tuesday.

The novel takes readers inside the story of a working-class family's high stakes estate struggle.

It's the culmination of a dream for Gormley, 66, who made his mark as a constitutional legal scholar.

He racked up multiple awards in 1997 for his first nonfiction work, "Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation." He later made the New York Times best seller list for his weighty 2010 tome, "The Death of Virtue: Clinton v. Starr."

He has been president of Duquesne since 2016.

Over the last three decades as he toiled as a lawyer, law professor, legal scholar, small town mayor and university president, he was writing and rewriting the novel he describes as a "love story to Pittsburgh."

"If I had 50 cents for every hour I worked on it, I could buy my wife a brand new house," Gormley said. "Instead, I'm dedicating this book to honor her."

Following the time-honored dictum that writers should "write what you know," Gormley transports us into his world. It is a world that began in the close-knit working class mill towns that surround Pittsburgh before expanding to Harvard Law School and then back again to his first love — Pittsburgh.

"Growing up, my house was right across from Union Switch and Signal," he said. "I grew up in a classic blue-collar neighborhood (Swissvale), and it was just wonderful. I wanted to try to capture these characters and the qualities and values that existed in these towns that I say you couldn't buy for a million dollars."

His novel revolves around a family's struggle to come to terms with an out-of-wedlock birth in the late 1950s, its 2008 legal battle to stake a claim to the multi-million dollar trust left by the scoundrel who fathered the child and how it all intersects with a local lawyer's life and a lost love.

The protagonist, Shawn Rossi, a Harvard educated lawyer who decided to forsake the lure of big money to make a difference for the people in his hometown, sounds a lot like Gormley.

Gormley's Pittsburgh roots drew him back from Harvard law to begin his legal career here. Along the way, he and his wife, Laura, raised four children in a modest home in Forest Hills.

Although he tapped that background to create Rossi, Gormley says the story is pure fiction.

Struggling to craft authentic characters, he said he interviewed Croatian families in Rankin to learn about their lives and work in the mills and elderly nuns from the Sisters of Charity at Seton Hill who ran a home for unwed mothers in Pittsburgh for 80 years.

"I interviewed nuns who worked in the Roselia home, wonderful women who gave their lives to protecting these young women and their babies. ... I was shocked to learn how unwed mothers and their babies were treated in our country until fairly recently. It was horrible. And the law treated them as if they didn't have an identity, they didn't exist," Gormley said.

In the novel, Rossi works to remedy that and in the process validate the choices he's made and the legacy he is leaving.

Gormley tapped many friends and advisers along the long path to publication.

A local women's book club — 14 women led by a lifelong friend — read two of the final drafts and offered suggestions.

Others weighed in on everything from the title to the cover art.

Gormley says any royalties from "The Heiress" will go toward an initiative to support creative writing students at Duquesne and nurture the next generation of Pittsburgh writers.

The book will be available through Amazon and at Riverstone Books in McCandless Crossing and Squirrel Hill; and at Barnes & Noble on Forbes Avenue at the Duquesne campus upon release.

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@triblive.com or via Twitter .