FROM SANTA MARIA WITH LOVE

Twelve years ago, not long widowed, with children at university, Margaret Hebblethwaite, an English writer and journalist, astonished her friends and family by leaving her job in London and going to live in a small house in Santa Maria de Fe, a remote, dusty town in one of the former reductions, the settlements for indigenous people created by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries. Touching, funny and compassionate, this selection from her columns in The Tablet tells the moving story of her time living simply among campesinos in South America. It weaves everyday spirituality and holiness, Latin American history and politics into a moving adventure story.