Children of This Earth

(price-clipped) [good sound book with light shelfwear; jacket considerably faded/discolored at spine, otherwise bright and attractive with just a bit of soiling to the rear panel]. What happens "when saint marries sinner" Well, the protagonist of this novel, a "cultured and conscientious curate," finds out in spades. Although he himself is pretty darn saintly -- "In striking contrast to religious charlatans like Elmer Gantry, [he] consecrates his life to carrying out his belief in the power of divine grace [and] tilts against the world of people preoccupied with pleasure, with golf and automobiles, with commerce, comfort, and pretty women" -- his very high-mindedness leads him down a perilous path. He's a handsome dude, you see, and therefore attractive to the ladies -- and when one particular "wealthy, gay, generous, charming" girl, tries to ensnare him, he rebuffs her by adopting a somewhat desperate counter-measure, instead choosing to marry "a girl whom he picks up on the street, one who is unembarrassed by cultured sophistication." (How's that for a euphemism!) Anyway, this scandalizes everybody, and in what we now know to be the classic ship-your-troublesome-priests-someplace-far-away approach (although usually employed for opposite reasons), he is reassigned to a parish in, of all places, Paris, where he finds himself fighting a spiritual war on two fronts: conducting his "holy crusade against a godless generation" while simultaneously trying to turn his "sin-hardened, unconquerable little pagan" of a wife into a saintly woman. All of this, as you might well images, "drives him to a mounting fanaticism," and does not end well. Quite scarce, with an OCLC search turning up just six holdings in libraries worldwide.

Product Info

Publisher: The Macaulay Company

Year: 1930

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

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