No one in France or the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century doubted that the Jesuits, loved and honored by friends, hated and feared by enemies, were a force to be reckoned with. Everything they did, they seem to have done with elan. Scholars, missionaries, educators, adventurers, social innovators - they were Renaissance men, giants. This is a biography that chronicles the life and times of just such a man, Louis-Marie Ruellan, who began his life as a romantic, pampered, bourgeois Breton who ended up a selfless servant of God. Ruellan-Prussian War. After the war, he was exiled with them to England in 1880, and finally came to the United States in 1883 to work among the Salish Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Among other things, Ruellan ended up as a founder of Gonzaga University.

For a reason that can be described only as bizarre, yet providential, Ruellan's untimely - and mysterious death in 1885 has had a lasting effect on the subsequent history of the Catholic Church in the Northwest, Alaska, and California. The author briefly depicts the colorful careers of a number of Ruellan's fellow novices and French confreres, as well some New York and Pennsylvania Jesuits he met on his way to the Oregon Territory. Through Ruellan's extensive correspondence, much of which is contained in the book, the author introduces the readers to miners lured to the Northwest by gold, as well as to the Indians, homesteaders, railroad laborers, farmers, and the men and women who gave the American frontier such a magical aura.

Fr. Cornelius Buckley, S.J. is a well-respected Jesuit historian who taught at the University of San Francisco for over twenty-five years. He is the author of several other books including Nicholas Point, S.J.: His Life and Northwest Indian Chronicles, and Your Word, O Lord, a book of meditations. He is also the translator of A Do-It-At-Home Retreat and the best-selling biography, Ignatius of Loyola: The Pilgrim Saint.