I have to write about my latest read, Saint Cloud of Gaul: The Prince Who Traded Kingdoms (Susan Peek, Seven Swords Publications, 2022). I can't help but think that if everyone in our diocese read this book we would see a renewed local church.
I passed this book up about three times before I finally bought it. I did not recognize the author's name, and I did not like the cover. But it was about our diocesan patron, so I kept thinking. Finally I looked inside the cover to see what other books Susan Peek had written. I recognized a few from my homeschool days. That clinched the deal. I started it the night I brought it home, and finished it the next. And I am a slow reader.
The book starts out with Cloud's witnessing the murder of his two brothers at the hands of his uncles. Cloud manages to escape. But right there I was imagining what it would be like for my granddaughter of almost the same age to witness such evil acts. Cloud's nightmare did not stop there since he knew he would be hunted down for perhaps his entire life. Talk about stress! And he could not exactly pop a Prozac or a Shaklee Stress Relief Complex, or B Complex. In our day and age he would have spent the rest of his life in counseling to overcome the trauma.
The book revealed two aspects of early French history that I thought were interesting. First, Cloud hid for a night in the ruin of a Roman staircase. That painted a strong picture of the time period and the landscape for me. We do not have Roman ruins in our back yards! Second, I learned that Frankish royalty did not cut their hair. That made them readily identifiable. It also made me think of the long hair given to Christ Our King in many works of art.
In Schoenstatt we have our "team" to call on when we need help: our patron saints, guardian angels, the Blessed Mother, and the Trinity. In the book Cloud referred to the saints in both the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant as "the gang". He was influenced by his holy contemporaries, notably his grandmother Clotilde, Bishop Remigius, and the hermit Severin.
The book was written as a novel for teens. Susan Peek did an excellent job in presenting many of the emotions and temptations which teens, and really all of us, may experience: loneliness, social isolation, fear, the desire for vengeance, the attraction of marriage and the struggle to discern a vocation.
My one disappointment is that Susan Peek did not include a summary about which of the events in the book were real, and which were literary. My guess is that all of them happened more or less as described. I also would have loved a recommendation list for further reading. But I have a start. I dragged my Ignatius Press copy of Saint Clotilde out of the back bedroom and started reading that last night.
