Former Broadway performer and Hollywood coproducer Brad Thomas has embarked on a new career combining two passions: storytelling and spirituality.

Thomas' debut novel, "Stephanie's Journey: The Warning Trumpet," set in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the former Yugoslavia's bloody war of the early '90s, tells the story of a fictional television journalist as she investigates the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary to six children in Medjugorje.

The protagonist's discoveries set against the backdrop of Sarajevo's "ethnic cleansing" death and destruction convince her that the messages of Medjugorje as well as the 1917 prophecies of the child seers of Fatima contain the ultimate solution for world peace. "Medjugorje is an amplification of Fatima," said Thomas.

He hopes the fast-paced plot and contemporary characters will capture the imagination of readers, regardless of their denomination. "Everyone wants peace," said Thomas.

"I wrote the book so that people will see there is hope for peace in this world, that there is an avenue for peace. And it doesn't come through governments, it doesn't come through the military; it comes only from people's hearts and the love of God. If you love God, worship God and adore God, you'll have peace."

He began research for the project back in 1980 after taking a break from what he felt was an increasingly secular and sexualized Hollywood. After completing production work on a film project in 1979 which he considered unsuitable viewing for his eight-year-old son, he decided to take his creative talents elsewhere. Drawing on his Catholic upbringing --- he was a boy soprano in Roger Wagner's Chorale and attended Mt. Carmel High School in Los Angeles --- he studied the prophecies of Fatima and Medjugorje in hopes of communicating their messages to a wider audience than the (Catholic) choir.

He traveled to Fatima three times in the '80s to collect research for a 12-hour television miniseries. "It took three years to convince the Fatima priests that I was not a Hollywood phony," said Thomas. He was allowed access to Fatima archives, where he read both published and unpublished accounts of Our Lady's apparitions to three children, Lucia, 10, and her two younger cousins, Francisco, 9, and Jacinta, 7, beginning May 13, 1917 and continuing monthly until October of the same year.

Thomas studied in-depth the first two parts of the messages from Mary, which had been kept secret until Lucia, then a religious sister, made them public in the 1930s. The accounts included a vision of hell shown to the children as well as prophecies detailing the outbreak of World War II, the rise of communism and the ultimate triumph of Mary's Immaculate Heart. At the center of Mary's message for peace was prayer and repentance.

The third secret, released in June 2000, was interpreted by Vatican officials as describing the violence and persecution that afflicted the church and Christians under Nazism, communism and totalitarian regimes. The text, described as a "prophetic vision" was also interpreted to have predicted the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

Thomas shopped a completed screenplay around Hollywood in the '80s, but found producers unwilling to tackle the story's mystical themes, so he put it in the proverbial drawer. At the advice of a friend two years ago, Thomas decided to turn the screenplay into a novel. He wrote it over the course of a year, between four and five hours a day at home, editing pages on his computer at Holy Family Church in Glendale where he works as an assistant to the pastor, Father Joe Shea.

He self-published the 364-page novel last fall through Indiana-based AuthorHouse and hopes grassroots reader momentum will peak interest in a film adaptation. Thomas dedicated the book to the late Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, "who brought to the world Heaven's peace plan for humanity."

As far as Thomas is concerned, the "secrets" of Fatima are "from heaven" in contrast to the "secrets" depicted in Dan Brown's best selling Catholic conspiracy novel and soon-to-be motion picture, "The Da Vinci Code," which he classifies as "pure fiction."

On March 22, 7 p.m., Thomas will discuss the book and hold a book signing at the Glendale Public Library. Hard cover and paperback copies of the book are available for purchase at several online websites, including bthomasbooks.com, amazon.com, barnes&noble.com and authorhouse.com.