Salvation, by Valerie Martin
Novelist Valerie Martin has written a great narrative about Francesco di Pietro Bernadone-- Francis of Assisi, the elusive figure who casts an enormous shadow across the terrain of Christian spirituality. Though she has done significant research (the bibliography is large, and the notes at the end of the text are detailed), she knows that it is impossible to write a factual biography of this man, despite numerous attempts across the centuries. But she tells his story with verve and erudition.
Martin immersed herself in Francis's lore and legend during the three years she lived in Italy. Assisi's shops, she writes, sell "atrocious trinkets and some of the worst food to be found in Italy" at exorbitant prices. "The spirit that pervades these streets is the same one that whistled down the stone staircases and across the Piazza del Commune in Francesco's lifetime, the same spirit that drove him straight into the outspread arms of Christ: the cold, relentless, insatiable, furious spirit of commerce."
These words set the tone for her narrative, which, with words for a palette, she paints like the panels of Italy's great frescoes. For Martin these frescoes "retain an astonishing freshness and a heady exuberance, as if the artists were excited about the story they were telling. Unconcerned with meaning, they throw their energy into a personal vision, concentrating on atmosphere." Martin takes her cues from them. Her account of Francis's life is drenched with atmosphere and filled with the energy of her imagination. She excels at evoking a milieu, an ethos of another time and place, and transporting the reader into it.
