The Damnation of Theron Ware

Theron Ware arrives in the Adirondack backwater of Octavius believing he's been sent to prove himself as a minister, but the town offers him nothing he expected. A cynical Catholic priest, an atheist doctor of science, and the intoxicating Celia Madden await him, each one peeling away another layer of his faith until the man who came to save souls begins to wonder if there are any souls worth saving. Harold Frederic's 1896 masterpiece dissects the collision between Victorian piety and modern doubt with surgical precision, exposing the rot beneath small-town American sanctimony. It was a scandal in its time, a fifth-best-selling book that readers couldn't stop talking about. It foreshadows everything Sinclair Lewis would later make famous and stands as one of the most ruthlessly honest portraits of American religious life ever written. If you've ever wondered what happens when a believer's mind catches fire, this is the novel for you.