AND WALK IN LOVE

by Henrietta Buckmaster ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 1956

Despite the well-deserved asterisk, this book demands some cautionary comments. As a fictional life of Paul, the approach is one that may repel readers who demand the fundamentalist interpretation of Biblical history on the one hand- and the rigid conformity to a doctrinaire interpretation from the Catholic viewpoint on the other. This inevitably eliminates a great many readers. But to those who come to it without predetermined patterns, it is an exciting reading experience. One turns to the Acts -- to the Epistles, particularly those assigned to St. Paul-with curiosity, seeking those clues to the incredible tale of Saul of Taraus, dedicated to exterminating this new revolutionary outcropping of Jewish dissidents, determined to let nothing stand in his way, even when it involved the stoning to death of his beloved friend, Stephen. The revelation and conversion on the road to Damascus is graphically described -- and from that point on Saul's long struggle for acceptance on the part of the apostles, his sharp differing with Peter and James, in their determination to keep the new faith to the loyal body of circumcised Jews, his conviction that his was a role to carry the message to the Gentiles, and his lifelong battle with his inner being,- his intolerances, his ambition, his high handedness, all combine to make him a human rather than a saintly figure. His friendships, his quick attraction for- and to- women, his anguished yearning to combat the recurrent violence rather than escape from it, the journeyings which took him well over the eastern end of the Mediterranean area, make this one of the great hero tales of all time. In most of this, Henrietta Buckmaster uses the chronology and outline of the New Testament record in the Acts, while elaborating, interpreting and expanding sometimes vague assumptions into firm facts. But she never loses that sense of an inner light, and Paul, one time known as Saul, takes on vitality, depth, breadth, significance in these pages. And the period in which he lived -- with all its depravity -- in integral to his story.

Pub Date: July 30, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1956

Categories: FICTION