THE LAND OF STONES AND SAINTS

The author, certainly no stranger to the fashioning of religious biography, offers here a work of scope and perspective but which does not lack for detail and insights. Because in Mrs. Keyes' view, Avila has come to be thought of in terms of the prioress and mystic, St. Teresa, and because this concept is only part of Avila's story, she has written of that ""City of Knights"" and ""City of Kings"" as a ""heroine"", as a focal point of her book, supported by her famous children -- Queen Isabel, the mystics, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and the Venerable Maria Vela, and the practical man of affairs, St. Pedro Bautista, Franciscan friar and Ambassador of Spain. Each selection, relatively brief for biography, is more than competently, if occasionally sentimentally, told. The introductory matter has the sound and look and feel of Spain and the ancient city of Avila.