When the Saints Came Marching in - by Kathy Coffey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This is not your usual collection of saints. God's creative genius peopled the fresh terrain of the United States with remarkable men and women. With the fears, hopes, frustrations, longings, and failures of ordinary humans, the people featured in When the Saints Came Marching In explored new frontiers in holiness. Like those who floated the Mississippi River for the first time, scaled Pike's Peak, or settled the unknown regions of Kentucky, they tried something new in health care, science, education, and race or labor relations. Kathy Coffey celebrates the remarkable lives and experience of holy explorers of faith whose stories continue to inspire today's pioneers to discover new paths to welcome the North American saints of tomorrow.

With her well-known insight and unique style, Coffey draws us closer to Junípero Serra, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Pierre Toussaint, John Neumann, Julia Greeley, Marianne Cope, Katharine Drexel, Rachel Carson, Dorothy Day, Thea Bowman, Ruma Martyrs, Cesar Chavez, Mychal Judge, and Dorothy Stang.

Review Quotes

Coffey's book will engage readers interested in American history, faith, and inspirational figures. What I appreciate most, though, is the book's spirit of connection-between writer and reader-to North America, and to the communion of saints, which inspires us to be better people as we continue to encounter ever-new frontiers of grace.St. Anthony Messenger

Kudos to Kathy Coffey for this collection of "open, sociable, normal, happy companions," just the kind of saints Pope Francis says we need. In her characteristically engaging and entertaining prose, Coffey helps us entertain the notion that the path toward sainthood is the very ground on which we stand. Be prepared for the spaciousness that emerges in these stories, both in the vast terrain of landscape these men and women traversed and in their very souls. It is in these wide open places that God enters, grace abounds, and lives are transformed in love.
Mary Stommes, editor of Give Us This Day

Kathy Coffey has given us a book of American saints for the era of Pope Francis. Where her title metaphor focuses on the American penchant for exploring frontiers, the book's saints-some canonized, others simply recognized-made me also think of Francis' metaphor of going out to the streets of our world. The saints Coffey covers, in brief readable chapters, are all "gutsy realists"-a memorable phrase used to describe Sr. Dorothy Stang. And all wonderfully human, warts and all. I learned about saints I'd never known, and learned more about others I thought I knew. In the end the book made me think of all the saints among us in this country-so much good news to counter all the bad news that fills our headlines and our heads.
John F. Kane, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, Regis University

Kathy Coffey makes America shine through its saints and its saints radiate new light in an American context. She is one of the best Catholic writers I know, and has written a book about saints that is like no other. It will expand your ideas about holiness and make your heart glow.
Michael Leach, author of Why Stay Catholic?

Uh-oh. Here comes marching in a book that won't ever again let us say, `But the saints aren't anything like us.' Read, if you dare, about the courageous, cantankerous, saintly people who lived in America in their time, but changed the world for all time.
Kathy McGovern, author of the weekly scripture column The Story and You