New paperback edition! The Sun and Moon Over Assisi reveals how the lives of the two medieval saints from Assisi--Francis and Clare--helped to transform the life of a thoroughly modern cynic from Los Angeles, California. The major events of the lives of the two saints are unfolded here in a series of vivid and engaging stories. Alongside the history of Francis and Clare, another story unfolds: the story of the spiritual transformation of the author, Hollywood filmmaker and television producer Gerard Straub, illustrating how Francis and Clare still speak to the present-day, secularized person. The author takes the reader with him, in a series of pilgrimage diaries and reflections, to the beautiful Italian sites important to the two saints. With Straub, we traverse the charming Umbrian hill towns, including Assisi, tour its churches and examine the art of Giotto found there. The Sun and Moon Over Assisi tells of an interior pilgrimage that will inspire the modern reader.

It's not really the author's fault that I couldn't finish this book. It's partly mine, and partly the editor's. As one Amazon reviewer pointed out, there are five or six books between the covers of Sun and Moon Over Assisi: the story of Francis, a tourist guide to Assisi, the journal of the author's 119 day Italian pilgrimage, his conversion story, and more. All well and good, but I just cannot follow the thread when jumping from medieval Assisi to 20th century Italy or 20th century America at the end of one chapter and back again at the end of the next. Personally, I often read several books at once, but I expect to know which book I'm getting when I open a given book at my bookmark. I enjoyed many of the chapters and I believe that any one of the stories recounted by Gerard Straub would be worthy of reading and interesting, had the author or editor chosen to disentangle them, but the book has taken up a space on my reading desk for more than a year and I'm not even halfway through it, so it's time to let someone else have a go at it. ( )

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