Back in January 2019, Open Road promoted Your Sins and Mine. It does so again, below. At the time I had started to consider what newsletter readers could learn about TC from Peggy's autobiography, and that took up most of that newsletter. Now, I consider addressing two topics that newsletter readers might find fascinating:

What was it that TC, herself, read (and how would I know)?
How did it show that TC was a Catholic writer, and to what extent was this set against the insights of other Catholic writers?

This novel is not one of the three Diatribes on Evil that I mention as a trilogy from 03/23/20. Superficially it could be. Yet it is from a decade earlier, and from the Senator McCarthy-Roy Cohn era, rather than from the Kennedy era.

On #1 I have a point of expertise. Here's why. In my last newsletter I pointed out there wasn't much evidence that Peggy read TC's novels. Even after Peggy died, there were far fewer than you would guess of TC's novels in the house. Though it is possible my sister got to signed copies before I did. By contrast, in real time, I know precisely much of what Peggy read, and I know that Peggy shared much of that with TC.

Peggy read murder mysteries, including Agatha Christie and Earle Stanley Gardner, as paperbacks. I didn't touch those.

Yet, in a good portion of my High School years, I probably read a science fiction novel a day. These came directly from Peggy.

Note that OR refers below to Your Sins and Mine as Science Fiction. If I were to go through the novels of Ray Bradbury, Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, many others, and especially Arthur Clark (famous for Space Odyssey: 2002) you would find I retain quite a memory of them after (approaching) 65 years. If you were to ask me to recount one of lasting signficance, yet, still little known to the public, I would expound on Clark's Childhood's End.

This was a novel that eschewed dystopia for an attempt to understand a viable next step in human evolution: what might lie ahead. I have good reason to believe TC read this. She knew about the pre- and post-millenial predilections of many evangelicals, before the famous Remnant series. Keep Anglican in mind. TC was descendent from Scotch and English ancestors, talked about them much, and favored English philosophers, like Bertrand Russell. She personally told me – I was probably 21 at the time, one of my few actual conversations with her. He was one of her favorites. She was surprised I knew about him – I can still feel her exclamatory burst of surprise. But then I am a mathematician, as was he.

Still, my favorite catholic writers have always been Reinhold Niebuhr and Gary Wills and Peter Brown. By contrast, TC's was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, very popular when I was young. You can tell a lot about a person's choice of favorite author, and quite simply whether they were preoccupied with the angels or the devils.

Since TC was a lot smarter than Donald Trump, though not averse to his predilections, we could learn much about how she spiced her novels with pockets of Catholic thought. Especially since the former insists he has a pipeline to God almost daily. I think TC knew better than such vehemence. I hope so!

Your Sins and Mine

By Taylor Caldwell

Science Fiction

$2.99 $17.99

#1 New York Times bestselling author

First there were the changes in weather. Lack of rain was turning the plains of Iowa, Kansas, and Idaho into arid blocks of parched earth. In the North, it was already January, and no sign of snow. All over the world, the seas were shrinking, and creeks and rivers looked like dried scars...But Earth’s survivors must face something even more frightful than nature: the evil of men, in this “brilliant” dystopian fable of a world without faith (Springfield Republican).

“Beautifully written.” —Washington Post

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2nd Quarter 2020 Highlights

Deeper into TC as a person, through Peggy's autobiography.
Comparing recognition offered her and, on one hand, Ayn Rand, and on the other, Joyce Carol Oates.
Four newsletters that take on the parts of Pillar of Iron, the time of Rome that you can hardly take your eyes from.
Getting closer to TC's major themes, and those who epitomize them.