Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis

Salvation by novelist Valerie Martin imagines the life of St. Francis of Assisi in the form of short, vivid scenes. She begins at the end, with his death in 1226, and then moves backward in time, ending with his youth and conversion. Martin has mined all of the early hagiographies of St. Francis in order to fill her book with sharp details ("his eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose"). She has carefully corrected some popular misconceptions about her subject: "He was not so much a nature lover (he was certainly neither an environmentalist nor a vegetarian) as a man who saw no distinction between himself in the natural world." And although she is not particularly religious, she clearly describes the spiritual significance of poverty. Salvation is not a defense of St. Francis or an argument about his significance in the contemporary world, but many readers will interpret its stories in a way that fulfills both. Many contemporary Christians are hungry for precisely this kind of story, about a person whose faith was so deep and dedication so strong that he sacrificed everything--even most Christian doctrine--in order to become like his Lord. --Michael Joseph Gross