Dorothy Day is alleged to have said: “Don’t call me a saint; I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” A new biography of her by her granddaughter, Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World will be saved by Beauty – an Intimate Portrait of my Grandmother, will, I believe, go a long way in preventing anyone from turning Dorothy Day, soon to be officially canonised by the Church, into what she feared, a plaster saint who can be piously doted-upon and then not taken seriously.
We’re all, I’m sure, familiar with who Dorothy Day was and what her life’s work was about. Indeed, Pope Francis, in addressing the US Congress, singled out four Americans who connected spirituality to a life of service in an extraordinary way: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. This new biography gives us an honest picture of who this remarkable woman actually was.
This book is extraordinary for a number of reasons: Kate Hennessy is a very good writer, the book is the product of years of research, she’s Dorothy’s granddaughter and had a very close and special relationship with her, and she manages in telling Dorothy’s story to keep both a healthy critical and aesthetic distance.
