Persistent Pilgrim: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy

Richard Nenneman portrays the pilgrimage of Mary Baker Eddy from her frail adolescence through the invalidism of her middle years to her years of great achievement as the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, one of the best-selling books of all time, and her founding of The Church of Christ, Scientist. Given free access to original sources in the Archives of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Nenneman read all of Mrs. Eddy's correspondence, as well as the letters and reminiscences of many of those who knew her or worked with her. With this background, he was able to write the story of her persistence, over a forty-five-year period, in sharing this system of Christian healing and establishing an organizational framework to perpetuate it. He writes not only of her achievements, but also of her moments of loneliness, occasional sadness, and even vexation as she, somewhat like Moses in the Bible, led her followers on a new path, a path that she herself wa