Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Conduct of Saints
    The Conduct of Saints
    The Conduct of Saints
    Ebook344 pages5 hours

    The Conduct of Saints

    By Christopher Davis

    2.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Conduct of Saints is a battleground on which power, God, sex, and the Devil collide in the impoverished city of Rome during May and June of 1945. The German occupation of the Eternal City has ended, the war in Europe is over, the Bomb has yet to fall on Japan, and Rome is under the jurisdiction of the victors - the American, British, and French Allied Control Commission.

    An American Vatican prelate and lawyer, Brendan Doherty, is involved in two crusades. With his horror of capital punishment, he means to avert the execution of the Nazi collaborator Pietro Koch. As Devil's Advocate, Doherty intends also to prove the hypocrisy of Alessandro Serenelli, the man who, forty years before, murdered the child martyr, soon to be canonized Maria Goretti. Converted by a vision, Serenelli has spent his life, in prison and out, in promotion of the beatification of his victim.

    Memory-tormented, hard-drinking, a moral street fighter for what he is sure is right, both angry and compassionate, Doherty feels guilt for having done too little to save the city's Jews from Auschwitz. He engages in his causes and quarrels with Rome's pre-dolce vita, postwar society - people both fictional and, like Alessandro Serenelli, Maria Goretti, Pietro Koch, Pius XII, and film director Luchino Visconti, historical - until the priest comes to a reckoning with himself and with the serene, unshakeable saint-maker Serenelli.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Permanent Press
    Release dateMay 31, 2013
    ISBN9781579623159
    The Conduct of Saints
    Author

    Christopher Davis

    Christopher Davis has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and other schools. He is presently Senior Lecturer in the Arts emeritus at Bryn Mawr College. He has published eleven novels, three books of nonfiction, a book for children, numerous articles and short stories in national and foreign publications, and produced a play based on his own National Book Award nominated novel A Peep Into the 20th Century. Davis has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant. He is the recipient of a National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Career Award.

    Read more from Christopher Davis

    Related to The Conduct of Saints

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Memories Of A Miracle

      Dec 1, 2023

      Memories Of A Miracle
      8 min read

    • Article

      Cherubs

      Jul 5, 2023

      Cherubs
      10 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Karolina

      Jun 15, 2019

      I first saw Karolina outside the Sumesa on the corner of Avenidas Oaxaca and Álvaro Obregón. She was smoking a stubby cigarette, a sled-like backpack hitched to her shoulders. I stopped short, felt my heart lurch. Could it be? Karolina was my brother

      31 min read

    • Article

      Flood The World With Beauty

      Nov 1, 2019

      A big literary conference is probably not the best place for a poet dealing with a mental breakdown. But there I was at AWP, skittishly perusing tables at the book fair, under the garish lights of the Minneapolis Convention Center. For two years, par

      8 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Maxim Osipov

      Mar 9, 2021

      Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where ar

      14 min read

    • Article

      Poetry

      Jun 1, 2021

      Poetry
      3 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      To The Manure Born

      Jun 1, 2020

      To The Manure Born
      5 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Buried Deep

      Oct 28, 2020

      Buried Deep
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    • Article

      Body Language

      Aug 14, 2019

      Body Language
      5 min read

    • Article

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard

      Jul 2, 2019

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Final Walk With Olds

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Final Walk With Olds
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cain’s Feast

      Sep 15, 2022

      Cain’s Feast
      9 min read

    • Article

      Hankering After Ghosts

      Dec 1, 2022

      It’s been 10 years since the publication of my book A Natural History of Ghosts (see FT296:42-45). I probably should have written more in it about the writer Charles Dickens. The truth is I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Dickens. I rea

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Conduct of Saints

    2.5/5

    26 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Riveting and a page turner from the very first page. I felt as thought I was living the stories of Koch and Doherty as they go through their various trials and tribulations. A book that indeed gives you an insight into the inner workings of the church, real or not.
    • 3/5
      set in immediate post WWII Italy, an American priest assigned to the Vatican investigates 2 cases of interest: the impeding trial of a Nazi official and the upcoming beatification of a young murder victim. The character of Doherty, the priest investigator,is well developed but the stereotype of an aging, obese Irish priest is old. There are several other characters who help the plot unfold and they are well integrated to the story. The plot tells of the impact of bribes and favors after the war, the conflict regarding the death penalty and Vatican intrigue of intrigue and canonization.
    • 4/5
      Unsettling...Excellent"He had done his duty and been correct in doing so, but he had been wrong in taking on the duty."This comment, from one character's self-examination, fully sums up this book. It is the one line most memorable to me. Well before I reached the mid-point of this book, I had the uneasy feeling that I had when I watched Burt Lancaster's character of Dr. Ernst Janning in the movie "Judgement At Nuremberg" - that between black and white there can be many shades of gray.Brendan Doherty, the murderer Serenelli, the war criminal Koch - three men battling their demons, three men vastly different on the outside, three men struggling to find peace on the inside - are all connected by one dilapidated bicycle in post-World War II Rome. Their characters are so skillfully developed and their stories are so delicately interwoven as to seem more real than created. Their lives are told as each layer of their histories is revealed.The book is very well-written. Each side story introduced is essential to the book as a whole - the Princess, the local Jews who fell victim to the Holocaust, the dreams, the corruption, the theft of priceless artwork. Each character is richly detailed. Every scene portrayed seems to live and breathe.While each thread of the tale is closed, being resolved is a different matter. If all you want from a book is theological and ethical pablum, then do not read this book. This book challenges comfortable thought.
    • 2/5
      I tried to like this book. In fact, I tried really hard. I continued to reading thinking the book would get more enjoyable. Sadly this was not the case. I found the book hard to follow and had to reread several parts several times to figure out who each character was and exactly what each storyline had to do with the others or in some cases didn't have to do with the others.I think the author did a good job of describing post-WWII Italy, and perhaps with some editing or revision this might have been a good book.
    • 3/5
      A brutal, harsh book, not easy to stay with. Most of the characters were not peopple you'd wat to get too wel acquainted with. The writing is what I would call lean. There isn't much wastd verbage, and that is sometimes not an entirely bad thing. The book picked up it's pace when the Americans were introduced into the story, but then they too bogged down in the multiple story lines running through the book. Overall, the book has a very dry style, not entirely to my taste. I finished it, but it was a tougfh go.
    • 3/5
      Takes place at the end of World War II in Rome. The German occupation of the city has ended and war is still going on with Japan. A historical fiction mixed along with real historical people and facts. The main character Brendan Doherty, an American priest, is a complex character fighting his own inner demons. At the same time he has taken on two causes, one he believes in and one he feels he just needs to do in order to bring out the truth. A good balance between a war time story and the inner workings of the Catholic Church.
    • 1/5
      When I read the description of this book, I thought I was going to really enjoy it. Having read it however, I was extremely disappointed. Let's start with the one good point I could find: the book paints a good, if ugly, picture of post war Italy. But that could have been done in about 75 pages, max.The Bad: I found the writing choppy and hard to follow at times. There was not a single character that I cared about and the story went nowhere. All in all, a major time waster. I had to force myself to finish it.Thanks anyhow LT!Bob in Chicago
    • 3/5
      I started out not liking this book due to the authors style of writing- to blunt, chop, chop, chop the words came. They did not flow into sentences, into paragraphs I felt. As the story continued the writing began to flow more smoothly ( either that or I began to become use to his style)- whatever, in the end, although it took me longer than normal to finish a book of this size, I have to say I liked the book. It is not one that I would have picked out myself to read, but I am glad I was given the opportunity to read it. It is not a happy story by any means - I felt it very emotional and After finishing the book I have to say that the authors writing style matched the subject matter perfectly.
    • 1/5
      I attempted to read this book as it was my first offer via Early Reviews; but sadly after struggling through 57 pages, I flipped to the last chapter, which is something I never do, and read the details of the horrible murder upon which the thesis of the book stands. I found the writing style to be insipid and boring. I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they are seeking a dry expose on the tawdry underbelly of the catholic church.
    • 2/5
      Christopher. Davis has published eleven novels, three books of nonfiction some short stories and articles as well. Some of these have been in foreign publications.The Conduct of Saints is his most recent. It is my opinion that this reads much more like a report than a story. The exchanges between characters, are clipped and most often cold, and left me wanting more. I did not find a single characer that appealed to me. I was not at all emotionally invested in any of them This story takes place in Vatican City in 1945, after the Germans have left the city.Brendan Doherty is an American lawyer as well as prelate in the Vatican. He is investigating two crimes, one of them the murder of a child and martyr by Allessandro Senelli. It has been forty years since the crime, and Senelli has spent much of that time in prison. Doherty is the main character here, he is a drinking man and seems to be as much at war with himself as with he is interested in solving these cases. He is seemingly cruel and heartless to Senelli in particular, but it serves only to remind us, and graphically, of the stabbing death of a fourteen year old young girl. A girl whose last cries were heard by the man, the killer, who remained unmoved as she was pleading for her life. Or was he? Is he the one who committed this heinous crime? Claiming to love her, he watched her die. Or did he? Senelli claims not to remember. This is why Doherty is involved. He is looking for the answer to the question. Why does Senelli not remember? s he truly the murderer, or is there something that has gone undiscovered for all of these years?Besides the mystery of the young girls murder, the death of a Jewish family weighed heavily on Brendan Doherty's mind and heart. The Ferri family consisted of Dr Ferri, his wife Giulietta, twin girls named Caterina and Letizia and the young son David had applied to the Vatican for instruction that would enable them to be baptized into the Catholic faith. While Doherty suspected that this family, like so many others were seeking safety from the anticipated occupation of the Germans he undertook the teaching of the Catholic Catechism to the family. The family soon became friends of the prelate, and he was eager to not only have them baptized into his own faith, but to see them safe from harm. The eventual outcome left Doherty feeling as if he had failed his friends, despite the fact that he was uncertain of their fate. It isn't any wonder that Doherty felt himself to be a failed man, but he was hardly alone in those feelings after such a devastating and ugly war. What becomes of this sad and broken group of people makes for an unsettling read, filled with heartbreak and desolation. While the story has some merit, the delivery leaves something to be desired, and is not at all what I would suggest as a relaxing read.
    • 4/5
      THE CONDUCT OF SAINTS, a novel by Christopher DavisBook review by Ron GoodwinIf you are into the pulp fiction, gory “who-dun-its,” genre, or cold and foggy break-of-dawn spy mysteries, this book may not be your huckleberry.Christopher Davis has woven an interesting, character-analysis; a thinking-person’s story with multiple plots and counter-plots based around two very different investigations by an American prelate and lawyer, Brendan Doherty.Doherty is a center-piece, a sometimes not so pretty center-piece, of a smorgasbord of characters in war-torn Rome, May and June, 1945. Doherty, who grew up a street-fighting, street-wise boy Irish-Catholic youth from Philadelphia, has turned into a hard-drinking, chain-smoking morally deprived Catholic prelate. His tasks, or rather his crusades as he sees them, are complex, as is the prelate. He has been assigned, by the Vatican, to investigate a murder and possible rape of a young girl of 12, who has been canonized by the Church, Maria Goretti. A second challenge, self-chosen and emotionally-charged, is an attempt to prevent a war-criminal with a history of depravity, cruelty, and violence away from a conviction and death sentence from the Allied appointed High Court for his crimes.The Vatican has opened a papal investigation to prove, or disprove that the convicted murderer of Maria, Alessandro Serenelli, may be a potential saint himself; or that he is a bold, lying hypocrite using religion to get him out and keep him out of prison. Pope Pius XII has personally asked Doherty to investigate the murderer, Serenelli, who is accused and convicted and who has already spent much of his life in prison for the bloody stabbing death of the young girl Maria forty years before; a crime he says he does not remember doing even after being caught holding the bloody murder weapon in his hand. It is during his incarceration that Serenelli claims to have had a vision of Maria, standing in his cell, holding flowers stating that she has forgiven him of his crime. Serenelli reveals his vision to his confessor, and this fact will eventually get him released from prison. He now professes to be a deeply religious convert, working as an humble monk in various monasteries and convents around Rome wearing the simple robes of a monk. But as Doherty digs more deeply into the man’s repentance, he finds more and more facts dispelling Serenelli’s conversion. Although Serenelli campaigns for Maria’s beatification, Doherty campaigns to put Serenelli back behind bars.His second crusade involves Pietro Koch, an Italian soldier, collaborator, and mass-murderer for the occupying Nazis. Koch is a violent extremist, who has been charged with torturing and murdering dozens, if not hundreds of partisans and Italian Jews. After the emancipation of Rome by the allied forces, Koch is arrested, placed in prison and is to be tried for excesses against the people. The punishment for his crime will be execution by firing squad. And the Italian people and much of the allied command intend to make an example of Koch. Doherty, who feels he did not do enough to protect Italian Jews from being rounded up and sent to the death-houses of Nazi Germany, has visited Koch in prison multiple times and based on his emotional, extreme aversion of capital punishment he feels it is his responsibility to prevent Koch’s death. With that as his motivational compass, he undertakes a personal crusade to save Koch’s life, frequently invoking the power of the Papacy, without permissions, in his attempt to prevent Koch from being executed. The story intricately weaves between the two efforts, Serenelli, murderer and potential rapist, and Koch, murderer and ghoul and introduces characters that, within several paragraphs become living, breathing entities to the reader. Davis chose to recreate many of the characters from real live, Serenelli, St. Goretti, Koch, Pius XII, and a number of others. And yet, the fictional characters are so perfectly developed, it is hard, if not near impossible for the reader to determine, who was fact, and who is fiction. This makes The Conduct of Saints a recommended, most interesting and thought-provoking read.

    Book preview

    The Conduct of Saints - Christopher Davis

    1^book_preview_excerpt.htmlu}˒Gܯ$4ҚHD4hUǓb>XX]7$Oh?/Yf8ʌybR}o_?/޿{ݯW^}/k+}cf ih8UccՇ.V0V/1eS)U}:WP)4XCꮍzH1.u]3}iۦ?MCOy/04x> ձ}3`L _S)5aU1qJ}>S.!`=? H~&FX}wb76.r\ЏgKjcZc5mbn`#2UzĬ8K x52{xv;,ÿm3.z1͇#?Ꮷ!C=8~x-K]Eoװ%:08LU.D~D/hcq o'{߮g,~yW'3 2 V,-=N q Hl~)u6>}7?B\;bϲQ>6Q76i BQ]p)~Oˇz_~ 04Fџnrq74ۨ#bTuM؎x\:Cȏ6vNycj0s,V3Xf[4V4zV~r5e_} +}n0 $h0CGs0wjs0}(, K&A;,?-&6$G.lM#߽qI91<,֟xhpC"6Wa{3ekN)Q}akcϏ1vxe Gh701oe$\xXя~֘-Ìjo=@[vX "YdO0hKkSzsmS@b:iT6hw?c4l'7>w3[< ߖsm'MLj\-8w!H-x.2W`2 Bb=k]fw5!Sh7 󨡌m\m/4A18ɽSNN48]۪]H /`oC rnh#(x{NȎWoɄ&N&[hgoS5j*x!M0X >07Cͽho؟ҵa絣,Ha |#-ҙƆcF #rR<Рmkc"q 眤[R J̈́ا%do}g<01[:n-g=,;Z^͠C2h@B x݇woMW7%<y-3.kJlἪj`*c2YlFxQ`_Gf`9,eFou^!n:b`qO<g)wFF=O,P2Z6nK)RGjjNy[gbfƃc2aXgueFoږ\ϑcUEE)ő`*4q d@򽧭qI͋<Ӳt؟1:$Qb-aUcNDuUqǛ#^ 7Oߺ Drmq K9zEJt[:` VSvhE"r@B@'3<5as|UE.? [o2{etO|B?`=>UBpfC|Y`x>X*(7HկS>kP|y 'LLʚ6*]&U3! ۲ :d0 pLmIn'a7 Dx04gy w0Y9v(ڤ. 2;H4?v)QHX7 8Q#s8D?bXa71oc: 8N?Wi5HՕzu ~C0,Oٗ:9`7Vv3w*7 gaf D'K ez8y<1͈mv }*ZVN#ad/wǔsv 2U*{WRxߴ:})TF<xLIu`M l2ӠkTbCǹg솹;6R+o<렠`pjP1UE倯mT"Vd?e.IgUXM eѪV~=d<Of, Oㅋ%}E9,Xd#@#J.2,\%1ao+?HJ}-# 2\;*=2V.1b'' n';ت0qۧ}Rg/^'Tg5wuJ"!,i &l Hvo#Jtt@@X3Thw|Y-=gDaVROJ3.PiMAѿA %y'"D8z<zۍD,7$clVOT#Q8.K-sc;p^)R}5BQ%!NCWb3_Z_=8Vk͊% $,U<:8jY&r7pC nrIcrߣV6{oӹ,tn%$Vi׼waYh@hY-*a6afC&^bl$EL.B)sFڣЈG`y%Պ"hgW+E;|}4?&?d;cA*e3 cP779lrٗ5em>kj7"l2-h,IUҝk܋Ꙟ\5p &ԔuUfL4*YWPscd |dmQ nҬC iJƒzM-!yZE Oi6DQ\+#'c"[@yŕg.6VM<Պ#v. v!O|D 4*ýVg9G⦿Qih^);dkŘ?_hd#Qk3U,.b!wb K  WM_%f<|*&K)pDhh"fQuK_GXRpI({zX7,dNkվ:N;(#zAZ|\bU.NF0]?cH\~&KJ?+>j(Li Qֱݴ}jA/sLSY;OJx0]=9Vm1.b]kʶB[nUc[H{˓՞J:74#bH<*b$\ـcqʛNȮߒ 3l*ltt5 M HWx~!c`-BƑ|2)DΩ[@O@Ck}?n~`Sjc212%db?355s J[YIrP'z;,+ZaU)?|u9Wo_޽^ջh\ZB=о"tsʶRhIޝӠl\-@&ۛ:ތaW1 驔e9,VmQ|4D-DYA=>ueڈW-"nwEa8|Xa:wm T_XH9(?&yf(q([]bNh\Ɵފbc-/{;崳IhqNV =|)r0>8Y-apd-색.Je7SiNjIFiI4l<1^>UPGjދ ?$f\ÆK`"J|l߷B!}tvj }qҢ>l i;4\<"c|("`+vthPH]7KĎE2U[/Lms:=]D3>+  )ѿQtjPc=Wgh5.Bғމ5v$}~rPާaP!0DzRw' ;xi]F 3_~{*9EOģ.t%U*o cl`Ӡ}U66DBmon8}Ww/_B[vG8Q@O?P$V甋dCQQE=̐C14\;MTrUwjVMgZZayCz江f9'^tN8y%XNM‰Ԉ@?5'NR|M@9y|nĺjgnkbhѠ{,@oEԷ=3к;d'.j.Q-Z}Wg %Bm2ydaWc$*QuEX}9a\dS. C։eQ'ְԋ)Z\9VʡeY32k>.~ zBD7i\x7g]Fq #V:w(dΓxRQD>pzl`,-RhdIQucb!ħц::Eϵ {T!t<|[fbMaeU7Lri)[M#J-*^9EfGƌ ?1{qvHZ͘IZ\!FzF Z;ѭ2&'W/Ώ_g+&"r`([N17INNO@9Q.nqt_o]$PaǼnˮq5e͉2G] # *c?u&V|{pхGv5[ZR#f@M@,w[TҶ2Ÿ=Nt`Z Ktn 8`%yxnvK U95wY /]$xJ*_9Y&f]7~L̙J d{\Sy EDؾ㋲2/jU彶}̏@xH,)FYsя8m=Ë*:Nqci[aMc2-Ůt_RF#97|u :(l1MtQ"+0DF3l KAG{7&m#|κDƚll+9ǭ6*5;Ilp} EJß8~lch+E669cE&԰ƫe*`wϣWGڭ!Ӎ1[)v7bejKbg]ǡNԮjZP!R1ZhO5:Ml,EcO*|DSgOt"ʂc7wcbL5 &D;HaRgEK+AamXS~)2[&3sf~:g׊MJRv^]DGp/ YIȅ` +t*W+9,1A]Ռ (#wGX\ig՗z_ӧx- RcI[Ec]u"pUb?\ `Cs]r' ##!fcY]%ѡ3'u>4r-ԹVDe64[ .!gG8gQcK2F~(aW~CMPLyJl"4oz!$_B} {40Bu@?%K f'1 267:81#oBe2>+n4:%O{?Yk\a@7Tc[?{O$$fB,_G`i  *3΀sLR]rs̻K~JayXK9)h(uWսK zEeK{P Ete%'[|-# ٘ Br/%fv!|_;02f TkBk-8/THmxD?nVl[uX&\hREC6=]B |0Q~>eGϒ"= q,F#p+ĐHLeouyRuṖN(i\Vn.\7$zl[Ak<  S7~sñ6{(JETgʅK֖ zOxDrQ0:#)&AU已f3օ{?/6S?Tw:'g;,*ɿ`4q7F 1DWg፬ߕcG~E2A 䧟P ! C!G>/ww?y~96WyO=+i}}Fm0tq̬U2SrnՇCֆ=p5]rQ /#ts4y e@"-`Q$<ɹof<ĩ+QsޖY4b}DcǴ Q@N-v}P#X6z)b]™؎]&E}vx}絷}0XB\F)-O]Ӕ#פrN սm.=h,ܡZ0 6N2yctz/t%[ {o&u?,Aڞ삊I7>),KǶvϘ.nXAj(\}td0sW:g(oщR?j{oD &!7Ռ[I3]}AVv{)>{?8쐸jʩgo_{!R*͹;c<1\q2%bT;U]Q%e)(.~AׇPGQ-:ZA;iɔhO<hƆӋ#>^M]rl3С c[Z0iEAڑU̇M;e>uYuуX 6ê~Z S,9ƚf<:L<ouI]}gEM ^փcHfݖ߉Cׅ6v/`mCViWCoW hQY*3 xxE; !KwXݞq/uҤӒЫ|ybr wBR`;ġD&aOH>|S2$\pޤ5EۓF!"RES=6( 17Nw?Q@z[RE|PE۰(B]URres_dC8S!%oқbl:rh,[%t'ef WsaVoJrWtek;~0Gl4Ѯ&\ayrbfT뫇uݛ55~ v !2~2w E/yKSJFl}3`WOMc,h0ݥk
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1