GOLD RUSH BISHOP

Children with a stereotyped idea of a bishop, based on the august personage who confirmed them during grammar school days, will be intrigued by Patrick Monague, first a miner in the rough and tumble frontier mining towns -- later a priest. Floyd Anderson has done several successful books for children:- John Barry, Father of the American Navy (Benziger), Bishop's Boy (Bruce) -- and this again is a competent job of story telling. Pat Monague wanted to be a priest but ill health forced him to abandon his seminary studies in Chicago, and eventually he completed them in France and was ordained there. Back to Virginia City, he built the first Catholic Church and started the first Catholic school and orphanage, and won the love and reverence not only of his parishioners but of the Indians of the territory, who called him ""Big Black Robe"", for he was over six feet and by then of rugged physique. His was an action-packed life, on the frontier of the '80's, and this addition to the Catholic Treasury series provides stirring reading.