No more good books!

I admit, this is an unreasonable fear, but it is one I felt strongly when I was 13.

Here's how it happened. Christine and I (both of us Protestant, by the way) made a huge discovery the summer of seventh grade.

I told her I had found this terrific book in the Junior High library, The Scarlet Lily ( a novel about St. Mary Magdalene), and she shared her great find at the public library, The Song of Bernadette. We swapped books and then went to hunt for more. After scouring the dewey decimal system for anything with "St." the only books we came up with were The Penitent (the story of Maria Goretti), a life of Joan of Arc, and an old title by Frances Parkinson Keyes called The Three Ways of Love. That was it! We were both convinced we had exhausted all the good books in the world. Couldn't figure out exactly who these people were with St. prefix, but our local libraries had no more to offer and we were dying for more!

Because of this we made a second discovery. While we were church-hopping (a summer pastime, visiting churches open during the day and looking around) we found that Sacred Heart Church across the street from where I lived had the most interesting things to look at, but the really surprising thing was they had stained-glass windows of the people we had read about in the books. There was a huge Maria Goretti up by the choir loft, Mary Magdalene over by the confessionals, and Bernadette in all her glory in the Madonna chapel. Somehow, all these fascinating people belonged to Sacred Heart Church. Made sense to us.

More later. We did find other books, by the way, and we hadn't exhausted all the good books in the world. Thank God.