The last priest in Mexico is on the run. The Church has gone underground, outlawed by the incumbent Powers-that-Be. Owning a rosary or a prayer book will land you in jail. Faithful Catholics thirst for the Mass, for the Eucharist, for God, but must content themselves with sporadic celebrations. There is only one priest left, the Whiskey Priest.

“He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had . . .

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“Mine is a parish like all the rest.”
This novel, small and unassuming, catches one off-guard: the perceptive country Curé, in the opening pages of his diary, speaks of the “stale discouragement” of his small parish; of loneliness; of parishioners who are “bored stiff”; of a “cancerous growth.” And from the first this small, quiet French village and parish of Ambricourt takes on a universal character: the village is . . .

Kristin Lavransdatter written by Sigrid Undset, who won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work, is a master piece of ingenious story-telling. The three book trilogy; The Wreath, The Wife and The Cross, centers around a young girl growing up in medieval Norway who, though she has a very pious and loving family, makes choices which lead her down a path of sin, struggle, and repentance. 

This . . .

François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize and recipient of France’s Legion d’honneur, was among the last century’s most pre-eminent men of letters, and a devout Roman Catholic.Vipers’ Tangle is one of Mauriac’s most famous works, a book of bruising beauty that explores man’s capacity for love and hate, bitterness and forgiveness, sin and redemption, and his crippling dependency on God’s . . .

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As one begins to read Woman of the Pharisees, one might think there is no possibility of redemption for the title character. When the novel by Francois Mauriac first hit France during World War II, one might have thought there would be no possibility of the world ever learning about this book, although it privately had acclaim among the French people.

It is considered Mauriac’s most ambitious novel, which . . .

It is in a night in 1946, a black wet January night that our narrator, Maurice Bendrix—whose very name implies something bent, slanted—wants to draw his reader to in order to begin his tale, which, in his words, is a record of hate far more than of love. He begins with the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain. Slanting; bent. Flaunting his own . . .

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True to Flannery O’Connor’s signature style of writing, her first novel Wise Blood  is a Southern Gothic story that masterfully blends religious themes centering on good and evil, and grace, and redemption.  It truly engages the reader with perplexing characters from the south who present grotesque qualities, hypocrisy, greed, spiritual and emotional confusion, a lack of identity, immorality, as well as ingenuity, and integrity. Events in their lives . . .

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Reviewed by Flannery O’Connor, November 27, 1963

Mr. Powers’ novel, long awaited, has arrived and it is a fine novel, altogether better than the chapters published separately in the New Yorker, the Critic, and Esquire had led to expect. These chapters were marked by a certain sameness that brooded no good for the future book, but the whole proves to be greater than the sum of its parts and . . .

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Willa Cather’s outstanding novel Death Comes for the Archbishop tells the story of Bishop Jean Latour and his friend, Father Joseph Vaillant, as they travel to New Mexico in the mid 19th century to bring the Catholic Faith to the natives. The novel is based on the true stories of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy and Father Joseph Machebeuf. Even the author’s choice of names is appropriate: Father Latour . . .

For most people familiar with the story The Lord of the Rings made famous by director Peter Jackson’s movie based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, one might think there is no need to read a review of the Tolkien trilogy. But there is more to this story than just the plot, action, characters and setting which Jackson has made familiar to us. 

Dedicating his work and . . .

From the back cover of the illustrated Idylls Press edition:

“Originally published in 1908, G.K. Chesterton’s nightmare-fantasy of Police vs. Dynamiters, Law vs. Anarchy, and Religion vs. Nihilism has influenced writers as diverse as Franz Kafka and C.S. Lewis, and remains as exuberant and imaginative, as original and prophetic as when if first appeared.”

While Chesterton is probably best known in Christian circles for his apologetical . . .

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The Christian world is depressingly awash in end-times fiction these days. Such reading material is depressing not so much because of the subject matter – which is often relevant and interesting – but rather because most of what is available is the dispensationalist schlock that infests the shelves of Christian bookstores across the country. For those who are looking for a more serious fictional treatment of the subject, there is Father . . .