It was in 1830 that an energetic Dominican friar crossed the Great Lakes to Mackinac in the Michigan Territory and began 34 years of effort which would bring spiritual solace to a vast and ever-more-crowded land. Soon he would range from Detroit to Sault St. Marie, would talk without fear among the warlike Winnebago tribe, would range by foot, on horseback, on river boat through half a dozen states. He would fight cold and poverty, plague and flood, bigotry and politics, paucity of assistance - human and financial. Soon, too, he would leave permanent religious establishments behind him on his journeyings - a veritable roll call of Mid-America: Green Bay, Somerset, Dubuque, Galena, Potosi, Burlington, Muscatine, Madison, Iowa City, Sinsinawa, Keokuk, New Dublin, Nauvoo, Saint Louis, Benton. Here was the heart and soul - for him, particularly the soul - of the new land to which he had come as an eager missioner from Italy, knowing little English, no geography, few folk customs. He was to master all. He was to write books for the Indians in their own tongue, to design the capitol for the Iowa Territory, to act as chaplain of the Wisconsin Territorial Assembly, to report for the pioneer press. He was to storm Europe for volunteers for the American mission, to serve as Provincial of his Order, to work with the pioneers of American Catholicism - Bishops Fenwick, Loras, Rosati, Cretin. He was to build churches from plans he designed by himself, and of stones he carried in his own arms, for congregations which began with ten, and which he would see grow into the thousands. He was to set up convents and monasteries and colleges, to aid the anti-slavery movement, and, all to soon, to die of pneumonia contracted during a sick call.

The story of this man of selfless, reckless gallantry is told with all the colorful appeal of a novel, and uses all the acceptable devices of fiction; but it is based on years of study, of travel to every spot where Fr. Mazzuchelli set foot, of reading of all the documents which relate to his career. The picturesqueness, the conviction, the warmth, the vitality stem from the subject - but are shared fully by the author of this biography of the frontier friar who is still as well remembered as he is revered.

Taken from the inside flaps.