A little Protestant in Rome

Description

The saga of Silver Bend by J. E. Grinstead is a novel. Despite the Western-sounding title, the provided opening reveals a moral, family-centered story seen largely through the eyes of a small child: Paul Bernard, a bright, devout Protestant boy in Rome with his troubled mother, Clarice. As Catholic and Protestant worlds brush against each other—through a sympathetic nun, a jovial priest, and even a glimpse of the Pope—the tale turns on conscience, repentance, and estrangement. It likely moves toward reconciliation, with Paul’s innocent faith nudging wounded adults toward forgiveness. The opening of the story follows five-year-old Paul in Rome, watched by his Scotch nurse Janet while his mother, Clarice, wrestles with guilt and the pull of Catholic ritual urged by Mrs. Dunton and Father O’Connell. Paul befriends a glamorous young woman, Mademoiselle Grand, and stops her from leaping off a wall; she later writes from the Highlands that she returned, forgiven, to her father. Taken to the Vatican, Paul slips into the gardens, sees the Pope, and naïvely expects to see God—the “Holy Father”—prompting a gentle lesson. In the Protestant Cemetery, he meets a man with a St. Bernard dog, unknowingly his own father, and gives him a kiss “for father,” which shakes the stranger deeply. Feverish and longing to see the Coliseum by moonlight, Paul sneaks out, collapses on church steps, and is found by the same man and his dog, who carries him home, sends for a doctor, and holds back from returning the boy immediately to the hotel. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
• Christian sects -- Juvenile fiction
• PZ