Mary Ellen Evans (2)

1973 The Seed and the Glory: The Career of Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, O.P., on the Mid-American Frontier, by Mary Ellen Evans (read 20 Jan 1986) This is a novelistic account of Father Mazzuchelli's career in the Dubuque, Iowa, area. I thought it well-done for the type of book it is, and moving, though it has a pre-Vatican II aura about it, having been published in 1950. I was especially interested since last spring I spent time in the area and saw his grave at Benton, Wis. Its soaring show more conclusion: "And when he died, an epoch, a world, died with him, and the book of the American missionary was finished. From the petrified forests of the Duomo to the living, labyrinthine forest of hinter-America--from the mother-music of Santa Salina's chanting to the eternal whisperings of wasteland lakes and the overpowering silence of the Mississippi--the security, the gentleness, the all-going-one-wayness of the cloister to the dangerous, desolate survival among wayward and barbaric strangers--that is Samuel's story." show less