Book of the Week

The story of the Healy family is one of the most interesting in American Catholic history. One son became a Bishop in Maine, another President of Georgetown University, another rector of a Boston cathedral, and the youngest son a captain in the Coast Guard. Two of the daughters became nuns in Canada. All in all, a pretty impressive Irish Catholic family. But the Healys weren’t your typical Irish Catholic family. Their father was a Georgia planter and their mother a slave. (This wasn’t general knowledge until the 1950’s.) Their father sent them North for an education lest they be subject the racial laws of the antebellum South. Their collective life story, told here by Professor James O’Toole of Boston College, is fascinating, and this book is highly recommended.