From provincial Brittany to the windswept hills of Maryland and finally to the old French trading post of Vincennes, Indiana, Simon Brutè followed a changing destiny. As a boy, Simon accompanied disguised priests into the prisons of the Reign of Terror, later scored brilliantly at the College of Medicine in Paris, then threw aside certain success to become a priest.

When Napoleon offered him his personal chaplaincy, Father Brutè refused and soon went off to join Bishop Flaget on the American mission. His dreams of a frontier life were dashed, however, when he was assigned to Mount St. Mary's College near Emmitsburg. There he became friend and director to Mother Seton, and exercised a remarkable influence on his students and, through them, on the American Church.

Father Brutè's star seemed fixed in Maryland when suddenly, in 1834, he was made Bishop of Vincennes. With the enthusiasm of a boy he set out for the West. There he found his "palace" a two-room cabin, his diocese vast and sprawling. Simon became a "bishop on horseback," riding hundreds of miles to find his people in the backwoods, in tiny settlements, in Potawatomie villages. He built churches and schools, traveled constantly, and, because he gave away all he owned to the poor, was known as the shabbiest man in Vincennes.

Even before his death legends sprang up around his name, and at the heart of them was the truth that Simon Brutè was the holiest, humblest and best-loved man on the whole Indiana frontier.

From the dust jacket