The Reader's Gift to the Catholic Imagination

Kristin Lavransdatter and sharing good stories

Happy November, friends! Since there are a lot of new faces here, I thought I’d do a super quick introduction.

I’m Haley. I have four kids (age 4-13) and I’m married to my high school sweetheart, Daniel. We just moved back to our hometown in FL where Daniel makes whisky for a living. We have an enormous goldendoodle names Samwise and an aloof cat named Lillian. After homeschooling for a decade we recently transitioned to Catholic school.

I am the Managing Editor of Word on Fire Spark, a new imprint for young readers. I also write books myself (for grownups and for children) and occasionally speak at events and lead pilgrimages. 

I plan to slowly extricate myself from the clutches of social media (Twitter and Instagram) and this will be the best place to find me. So I’m thrilled you’re here!

We’re taking a breath after a whirlwind of travel during the month of October. Or at least, looking forward to taking a breath after Daniel gets back from  a work trip to Barbados to learn about making rum (it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it!) So I’m getting the house in order, starting to unpack more of the girls’ room, taking the dog on long walks, and waking up at the crack of dawn feeling like I should be writing a talk only to realize with delight that I am done with speaking events for 2022.

Two of my favorite events this fall have been The Catholic Imagination Conference in Dallas and The Well-Read Mom Conference in the Twin Cities. At the Catholic Imagination Conference, writers, poets, scholars, and publishers celebrated the Catholic literary tradition and at the Well-Read Mom conference two hundred women gathered to engage with great literature. 

Both were absolutely inspiring and soul-nourishing and one of the many themes that stood out to me from each event was the importance of readers. We often think about the Catholic Imagination in regards to artists, creatives, and the academics who study them. To have good stories, we need people to write them, of course! And then we need publishers who will publish good books and keep them in print. But we need readers to tackle good Catholic literature, share it, and discuss it if the Catholic imagination is going to influence the world.

I think a great example of how these different puzzle pieces fit together is the re-discovery of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter as one of the great novels in the Catholic tradition. If you’re not familiar with Undset, she was a Nobel prize winning Norwegian novelist and Catholic convert.  

Kristin Lavransdatter is a three part saga of a wealthy Norwegian noblewoman set in the fourteenth century and published in the 1920s. It follows the life of Kristin from womb to tomb and it is incredible. While Sigrid Undset was never forgotten in English-speaking literary circles, your average bookish Catholic was not tackling this 1000+ page saga. But Tiina Nunnally’s new translation of Kristin Lavransdatter changed that. Nunnally finished the new translation in the year 2000 and her translation brought this story into the conversation for English speakers in a way it simply wasn’t twenty-five years ago when the older, cumbersome translation was the only option. This book deserves to be lauded as one of the best Catholic novels of all time, and it is having a real moment in Catholic culture.

I wanted to get a feel for how much the new translation affected the familiarity Catholic readers have with this novel today and so I polled the Facebook group for my podcast (the group is made up of primarily Catholic women who love to read). 500 women responded and only 9% were not familiar with Kristin Lavransdatter. Of the women who were familiar with the novel, only 4% had even heard of the book before the year 2000. So 96% read the novel after the new translation by Tiina Nunnally. 

When scholars and publishers make a text accessible, then there’s a snowball effect as people start reading and sharing it. And book clubs like Well-Read Mom (which has thousands of members all over the country started putting Kristin Lavransdatter on their reading lists) really contribute to bringing books into the conversation. Then podcasts start discussing them, interest spreads. Because when you really love a book (and Kristin is a book worth loving) you want to share it. 

Something I believe with all my soul is that good stories change the world. And even if you’re not a writer or storyteller, you can still participate in that change by being a good reader. In fact, you are absolutely necessary to the work. So thank you.

I plan to share some snippets of different talks I’ve given in the past couple of months about good books with you here on Substack!

And on the theme of supporting Catholic writers–this week only I have orders open to purchase signed copies of my own books directly from me. Ordering from us directly is the best way to support authors because we get only pennies from Amazon for every book that sells.

I only open orders up once or twice a year because shipping them all out is a beast and this will be the last time I’ll have orders open before Christmas.

If you want a book for yourself or as a Christmas gift (psst! My second mouse nuns story is a Christmas story), then head to this order form and fill it out ASAP before I close orders at end of day tomorrow!)

Wishing you a lovely first week of November,

Haley