Author: CAstfalk

5 Saint Stories Your Teen Will Love

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There are a handful of words most people will never misspell. They are the words they once misspelled when they got knocked out of a spelling bee. Mine are lunule, hexafoos, and hagiography. The last one is pertinent here:

Hagiography: (1) biography of saints or venerated persons. (2) idealizing or idolizing biography

(Source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary)

Hagiography sounds like an arcane word, obscure and maybe old and stodgy. Maybe that has to do with “hag.” Unfortunately, that’s sometimes how the lives of the saints come across. Through misperception or stale storytelling, the lives of the saints may seem boring or irrelevant. They are quite the opposite!

Holiness is relevant in every time and place throughout human history, and achieving that holiness is the result of inherent struggles, often heroic ones. Sometimes the tension between good and evil is played out in dramatic fashion as in the lives of martyrs. Sometimes it is an internal struggle hidden behind a cloister wall. In both cases, there is tension ripe for a good story.

If you’re looking for lives of the saints (and blessed) stories that will highlight that struggle in ways that are relevant and relatable, told in compelling novels, I have five recommendations to get you started. Find these books and more saint novels at CatholicTeenBooks.com/saint-stories.

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My Summer 2024 Reading List

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As I write this, we’re already more than a week into summer, so I’m assembling my list a bit late but confident I can enjoy these books in the remaining months before school-year craziness ensues. Yes, I, um, may still be working through prior summers’ lists, but goals are supposed to stretch us. Right?

Cole and Laila Are Just Friends by Bethany Turner

Cole and Laila are Just Friends

Blurb: Cole Kimball and Laila Olivet have been best friends their entire lives. Cole is the only person (apart from blood relatives) who’s seen Laila in her oversized, pink, plastic, Sophia Loren glasses. Laila is always the first person to taste test any new dish Cole creates in his family’s restaurant . . . even though she has the refined palate of a kindergartener. Most importantly, Cole and Laila are always talking. About everything.

When Cole discovers a betrayal from his recently deceased grandfather that shatters his world, staying in Adelaide Springs, Colorado, is suddenly unfathomable. But Laila loves her life in their small mountain town and can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. She loves serving customers who tip her with a dozen fresh eggs. She loves living within walking distance of all her favorite people. And she’s very much not okay with the idea of not being able to walk to her very favorite person.

Still, when Cole toys with moving across the country to New York City, she decides to support her best friend–even as she secretly hopes she can convince him to stay home. And not just for his killer chocolate chip pancakes. Because she loves him. As a friend. Just as a friend. Right?

They make a deal: Laila won’t beg him to stay, and Cole won’t try to convince her to come with him. They have one week in New York before their lives change forever, and all they have to do is enjoy their time together and pretend none of this is happening. But it’s tough to ignore the very inconvenient feelings blooming out of nowhere. In both of them. And these potentially friendship-destroying feelings, once out in the open, have absolutely no take-backs.

Why I want to read it: I kinda hate the cover, but I’ve heard lots of good things about this book. I’ve only read one book by the author, and I didn’t much care for the main character, so I want to give the author another try.

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An Open Book

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An Open Book

Welcome to the July 2024 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

Beer in America

For Father’s Day, we made a little trip to a local bookstore that sells primarily used books. We were like kids in a candy shop. Those books will be showing up here as we read them, starting with a historical book my husband grabbed: Beer in America: The Early Years 1587-1840, Beer’s Role in the Settling of America and the Birth of a Nation by Gregg Smith. Part American history, part brewing history, it has some mixed reviews on Goodreads, so take that for what it’s worth. It covers the science, social importance, and historical role of beer in our country.

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An Open Book

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An Open Book

Welcome to the June 2024 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

Big Whiskey

My husband has been reading Big Whiskey: Kentucky Bourbon, Tennessee Whiskey, the Rebirth of Rye, and the Distilleries of America’s Premier Spirits Region by Carlo DeVito. It is considered the definitive guide to the American Whiskey Trail (or so the description says) and features distilleries in both Tennessee and Kentucky. It includes interviews, histories, facts, and photographs. My husband has found it a useful guide and an interesting book that would work well in a coffee-table style presentation. It does, unfortunately, have some typos sprinkled throughout. Might make a nice Father’s Day gift for the bourbon afficionado.

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Jellybean: A Baby’s Journey to God

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Jellybean

Jellybean: A Baby’s Journey to God by Theoni and Bastian Bell

Little Jellybean, nicknamed by her family, experiences an exciting world of sound and sensations inside her mother’s womb, encountering the voices and personalities of her loving family. Just when she has nearly outgrown her mother’s belly, a surprising visitor guides her to a new home. There, Jellybean is given a mission to help her family find meaning in their loss and ultimately join her in the presence of God. A beautiful story to help families heal after the loss of a baby.

More information and resources at Holy Heroes.

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To Crown with Liberty: Must-read historical fiction from Karen Ullo

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To Crown with Liberty

New Orleans, 1795. In the wake of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Alix de Morainville Carpentier—a former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, now married to her gardener—seeks peace and security in the Spanish colony of Louisiana. But her journey into the man-eating swamp called Attakapas reopens the wounds of her old life in France. Alix is forced to reckon with the choices that saved her life at the cost of her honor—and perhaps her soul.

In revolutionary France, the Old World is dying; the quest for liberty, equality, and fraternity has become a nightmare where the price of dissent is blood. In the wilderness of Spanish Louisiana, a new civilization is beginning to emerge—but in this budding New World, the slave trade perpetuates the systems of oppression that sparked the revolution. Caught between old and new, scarred by trauma and grief, will Alix ever find a home where she can truly be free?

To Crown with Liberty is a historical novel based on riveting legends from George Washington Cable’s Strange True Stories of Louisiana (1888).

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An Open Book

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An Open Book

Welcome to the May 2024 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

Life has been busier than usual with all the spring concerts, sports, etc., with more to come in May, including exams. Reading is happening in the margins of our days. Even so, I have some great books to share with you this month.

Love in the Eternal City

I’ve been reading an advance copy of Rebecca W. Martin’s debut novel, Love in the Eternal City, A Swiss Guard Romance. A contemporary Catholic romance? Yes! More of these, please. I’ve never visited Rome, so I’m traveling vicariously with the heroine, Elena, who has re-located to Italy after a broken engagement, disintegrated friendship, and lost job. There she meets a Swiss Guard, Benedikt. I knew nothing about the Swiss Guard, other than their colorful uniforms, and I appreciate learning more about their history and modern role. Looking forward to the rest of this romance, which releases in August.

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An Open Book

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An Open Book

Welcome to the April 2024 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

To Crown with Liberty

I’ve almost finished Karen Ullo’s forthcoming historical novel, To Crown with Liberty (Chrism Press). A split-time novel set during the French Revolution and late 18th century Louisiana, the story of Alix de Morainville of the French nobility, is told through her own eyes. The reader experiences the persecutions and executions of the Reign of Terror and the wilds of the American south as farms and plantations bring civilization to the swamps of Louisiana. Some prominent historical French and American figures appear throughout. The faith interwoven in the story makes it stand out from purely historical and less personal sagas. Even without having read the conclusion, I highly recommend this novel, which will be launched on May 1.

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