Lights in a Dark Town.

Lights in a Dark Town

Meriol Trevor

Ignatius Press

PO Box 1339, Fort Collins, CO 80522

www.ignatius.com

9781586176280, $14.95, PB, 240pp, www.amazon.com

Synopsis: To the Birmingham, England of 1849 comes Emmeline Erle, with her mother, and they are plunged into a industrial city of smoke and grime. The town is one of great contrasts; progress and poverty, industrial expansion and murky slums, new villas and filthy streets go side by side. Dark and light battle in the minds of its people too, principles of freedom and tolerance struggling with ignorance and prejudice, deep doubt of religious truth coexisting with fanaticism.

Emmeline quickly makes friends--Lizzie, the pathetic, hardworking skivvy; the doctor's family; Daniel, the lonely schoolboy next-door; her rather prim schoolfellows and the warm-hearted boatmen on the cut. The most important person in the town, for both Emmeline and Daniel, however, is Fr. John Henry Newman, who is running a disused gin-palace as a chapel in one of the worst areas, attempting to bring help to the poor factory workers and the light of truth to citizens blinded by suspicion and bigotry. They learn to know and love this great man, and with him experience the anxieties of the cholera outbreak and the dangers of the 'No- Popery' riots.

Caught up in one excitement or trouble after another, Daniel and Emmeline both finally arrive at happier times, while the walls of Newman's new church, a symbol of light in a dark town, rise into the foggy Birmingham sky.

Critique: "Lights in a Dark Town" by Meriol Trevor is the colorful and dramatic about the life of John Henry Newman, who was a famous British priest, preacher and pastor. The panorama of Victorian England is brilliantly unfolded here--Birmingham, Oxford, Prince Albert opening a new railway, theatres, factories, The Crystal Palace. But above all, "Lights in a Dark Town is a novel that effectively portrays for readers of all ages the character and thought of Blessed John Henry Newman. While very highly recommended for community library General Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Lights in a Dark Town" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).

Margaret Lane

Reviewer