“Thérèse: Saint of a Little Way”

My discovery of Frances Parkinson Keyes’s Thérèse: Saint of a Little Way was providential. This warm and affectionate account of the life of Thérèse of Lisieux brought the saint to life for me as no account has done before. This true story is written with a novelist’s sense of drama and an historian’s eye for detail. 

I found the book in the basement of an antique store, amidst a cluster of books marked as being linked to New Hampshire. I wondered what the Little Flower had to do with the Granite State. I soon learned that the author had lived in New Hampshire, where her husband served a term as Governor in the early 20th century before being elected to the U.S. Senate. 

Mrs. Keyes published a first edition of this biography in 1937, with the title Written in Heaven. The volume I found was a revision published in 1950 under the new title. The author spent time in France visiting the sites where Thérèse had lived, and she lived for a time at the Abbey where Thérèse went to school. Her immersion in Thérèse’s milieu left rich impressions to share with readers. Her photos taken on her trips to France complement the text.

I had not heard of Mrs. Keyes before discovering this book, but I have since learned that she was a prolific mid-century author in a variety of genres. A convert to Catholicism, her faith-related works include books about St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as an account of her own conversion.

At this writing, not even Amazon can come up with this title. Leave it to a little antique store in a small New Hampshire town to have in stock this 75-year-old hardback with its tattered dust jacket, waiting to fall into the hands of a receptive reader.

This post is shared on the Open Book linkup hosted at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com.