The history of Ireland, like that of many lands, is studded with the names of canonized saints and other good people who have proven that sanctity spans all times. In telling the stories of Patrick and Brigid, the navigator Brendan, missionaries Columcille and Columban, martyrs Laurence O'Toole and Blessed Oliver Plunkett, Mother McAuley and her sisters of Mercy, the saintly layman Matt Talbot, Father Theobald Mathew, and Bishop Galvin who so long resisted the Communist onslaught in China, Robert Reilly illumines Ireland's history, her people, and the land itself. The Irish saints whose stories are told in this book are "saints" in the broad religious sense. Some have been canonized by the Church; others, though not formally saints, are nonetheless saintly.

From the dust jacket