A Belief in Providence: A Life of Saint Theodora Guerin

Long before women marched for equal rights and Title IX sought to change the way everyone looked at college and high school athletics; before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and Eleanor Roosevelt championed the plight of the common man; before Madam C. J. Walker became an entrepreneur and Susan B. Anthony campaigned for woman suffrage, there was Mother Theodore Guerin, a pioneer on the Indiana frontier and the founder of the Sisters of Providence at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. "A Belief in Providence: A Life of Saint Theodora Guerin," a youth biography, explores the life of the woman who would become Indiana's first saint. Born Anne-Therese Guerin in France, she joined the Sisters of Providence and in 1840 came to the United States to found an establishment near Terre Haute, Indiana. Despite poor health, primitive frontier conditions, and dealings with a contentious archbishop, who at one point locked her in a room in the rectory, she founded Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, the oldest Catholic women's liberal arts college in the United States, and opened schools in Jasper, Madison, and Vincennes, often facing suspicion and hostility from the local population. The book also examines the process leading to Guerin's canonization on October 15, 2006.