Arsous-kitsi-rarpi, "the man of good heart", was a courageous, merry, spirited missionary priest, respected and honoured by his Indian charges and by all the white men of the Canadian Northwest who heard the tales of his great work, or encountered him among the Cree and Blackfoot tepees.

As a young Oblate missionary, Father Lacombe went into the vast Northwest Territory to work among the Indians' he shared their poverty, their hunger, their dangers; he nursed them through violent plagues of measles and smallpox; he was peacemaker between tribes and between the white man and the Indian. His long lifetime in Canada's west saw the end of the buffalo age, the transfer of the Territories to Canada, the building of the transcontinental railway, the Riel insurrection, and the swift growth of white settlements as the country expanded westward.

Josephine Phelan has drawn, for young readers, a spirited portrait of the famous western "blackrobe" and his busy, eventful life.

From the dust jacket