Elizabeth Seton: American Saint

By: Catherine O'Donnell

Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin

In 1975, two centuries after her birth, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton, making her the first saint to be a native-born citizen of the US in the Roman Catholic Church. Seton came of age in Manhattan as the city and her family struggled to rebuild themselves after the Revolution, explored both contemporary philosophy and Christianity, converted to Catholicism, and built the St. Joseph's Academy and Free School in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Hers was an exemplary early American life of struggle, ambition, questioning, and faith, and in this flowing biography, Catherine O'Donnell has given Seton her due.

O'Donnell places Seton squarely in the context of the dynamic and risky years of the American and French Revolutions and their aftermath. Just as Seton's dramatic life was studded with hardship, achievement, and grief, so were the social, economic, political, and religious scenes of the early American republic in which she lived. O'Donnell provides the listener with a strong sense of this remarkable woman's intelligence and compassion as she withstood her husband's financial failures and untimely death, undertook a slow conversion to Catholicism, and struggled to reconcile her single-minded faith with her respect for others' different choices.

The trove of correspondence, journals, reflections, and community records that O'Donnell weaves together throughout Elizabeth Seton provides deep insight into her life and her world. Each source enriches our understanding of women's friendships and choices, illuminates the relationships within the often opaque world of early religious communities, and upends conventional wisdom about the ways Americans of different faiths competed and collaborated during the nation's earliest years. O'Donnell reveals Seton the person and shows us how, with both pride and humility, she came to understand her own importance as Mother Seton in the years before her death in 1821.

©2018 Catherine O'Donnell (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Remarkable person

Elizabeth Ann Seton is one of the most remarkable people ever. After having 5 children and being widowed she then founded an order of nuns that grew to be one the largest and most effective in history, the Sisters of Charity. Teaching the young and ministering to the sick they grew to an order of more than 8000. St. Elizabeth also started the first Catholic School in America. This book examines this remarkable life in great detail. It is obvious the author went to great lengths to obtain the detail and history of St. Elizabeth Seton's life. A great, great book!

Historical novel

The author brings the character alive in the historical details of the time as well as recorded conversations. Great book that flows with great intrigue. Well cited.

I wanted so much to love this book

I love Elizabeth Ann Seton. I grew up around Emmitsburg and feel a great kinship to her as I’m a Teacher and in love with Jesus!! However, 18 hours of this narrator was almost unbearable. The Author did incredible research...... but it was so droning that it took me months to get through because it was so boring. I kept listening to other books and then I’d try to listen to one more hour of this one. I’m sorry but I can’t recommend this book unless you have a tremendous amount of patience. I certainly wouldn’t read it while I was driving as I would fall asleep quickly on the road .....