FAITH THE ROOT

I found this singularly refreshing reading. Recommend it to those who long for a deep draught of fresh, pure air, of warm human faith in the divine, of a personality that serves as magnet to a whole community, whatever their faith and creed. Father Germain, lovable old French priest, confessor to a village on the Canadian-United States line, succeeds in drawing people to him with never a sense of a faith overstrained, unreal. Always there is the conviction that here is a very human but very good old man,who in his old age remembers the passions and the foibles of his youth, and accepts weaknesses in others. His ""congregation"" begins, perhaps, with the boys who swim in the near-by river, and to whom he gives scapulars wholesale; it goes on to the embittered hunchback living a hermit's life in the woods; it includes the Lutheran person whose son wants to marry a Catholic girl; it reaches out to Stan, bad boy of the town, in deeper trouble than he merited. There is something of the appeal of Keys of the Kingdom, of Dr. Serecold, of Father Nalachy's Miracle. Choice of Catholic Book Club, but should not be pigeonholed as solely a Catholic or religious book.