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No one in France or the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century doubted that the Jesuits, loved and honored by friends, hated and feared by enemies, were a force to be reckoned with. Scholars, missionaries, educators, adventurers, social innovators - they were Renaissance men, giants. This is a biography that chronicles the life and times of just such a man, Louis-Marie Ruellan, who began his life as a romantic, pampered, bourgeois Breton who ended up a selfless servant of God. Ruellan had entered the Jesuits in 1870, just in time to serve with them in the Franco-Prussian War. After the war, he was exiled with them to England in 1880, and finally came to the United States in 1883 to work among the Salish Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Among other things, Ruellan ended up as a founder of Gonzaga University.
Through Ruellan's extensive correspondence, much of which is contained in the book, the author introduces the reader to miners lured to the Northwest by gold, as well as to the Indians, homesteaders, railroad laborers, farmers, and the men and women who gave the American frontier such a magical aura.
