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A Powerful Catholic Historical Adventure Novel, October 4, 2011
By Therese Heckenkamp "Author of Past Suspicion"This review is from: Poor Banished Children: A Novel (Hardcover)
Poor Banished Children by Fiorella De Baria is a truly unforgettable historical novel about rejection, survival, despair, and redemption. I feared it might be a ponderous read, but in contrast it was swift-paced and completely compelling. Scenes will be seared in your mind long after you close the book.

Set in the 1600s, this tale is about a young Maltese girl who is spurned by her family, taken in and nourished in both body and soul by a physician priest, before being torn from her religious life by Barbary pirates and sold into a savage world of slavery in Muslim North Africa.

Be warned that this is no story for light entertainment. Exciting as it is, and as hard to put down as it is, it is also hard to read because it is fraught with the most wretched of abuses and suffering, unspeakable atrocities made painfully vivid by such expert writing. Not for weak stomachs or the faint of heart! Make sure that you can handle the strong depictions of degrading, inhuman treatment of slaves, the merciless torments, misery and horrors. In many ways, Poor Banished Children is more frightening than inspiring.

And yet . . . I couldn't put it down (even when I should have been sleeping). I had to read on, hoping for mercy and redemption. The main character struggles and fights and prays and despairs as she relives her tale during what she feels must be her death-bed confession. She clings and falls from her Catholic faith, convinced that she is unworthy of love, unable to be saved, and yet she yearns for absolution.

Poor Banished Children is a powerful Catholic historical adventure story in which the main character fights for survival of both her body and soul. It is gripping and haunting, filled with many religious elements that enrich the story and are never superfluous. Poor Banished Children is highly recommended for adult readers, Catholic or not--just make sure you are up to the challenge of a truly soul-shaking journey!

Reviewed by:
Therese Heckenkamp
Author of "Past Suspicion"
and Reviewer for:
Catholic-Fiction.com
TraditionalCatholicNovels.com
and Ivory Tower Press

I met my friend Pat Buckley at a conference where I was speaking last weekend and told him off for writing a blog post lamenting today. Being the gentleman he is, he has written a and promised to write a review of Poor Banished Children on his blog. I only hope he likes it after all that :-)

This is such a wonderful idea. The Society of Authors is initiating a Short Story . Basically, a number of famous authors initiate the proceedings with an opening sentence, then tweeters can suggest sentences and the best ones are chosen to continue the story until it is finished. I am actually going to have to join Twitter just to take part in this!

Fascinating with A.S. Byatt about the struggle of modern man to define himself and to define reality. I couldn't resist a smile when she admitted how hard she found boarding school life, not because she was at a particularly nasty institution or was subjected to bullying, but because there was a hierarchy of girls, important ones and unimportant ones. She was an unimportant one but, she adds with a smile, she has yet to meet a writer who was one of the important ones.

Hmm. I certainly felt pretty close to the bottom of the heap in terms of my school year's hierarchy, but I put it down to being hopeless at netball in an English girls' school where you practically had to apply for naturalisation papers to the human race if you were not in the netball squad. Maybe I should hold a competition with a chocolate bar as the prize for any writer who can verify that they were a happy, well-adjusted teenager who loved nothing more that to be the life and soul of the school disco. I can just see the postcards flooding in...

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I read this book as a teenager and Solzhenitsyn has been one of my heroes ever since. It is a truly exceptional book with a deceptively simple style which draws the reader in right from the start and paints such a vivid picture of daily life in Russia's labour camps that it is almost palpable. I remember shivering with the cold and being so completely overwhelmed afterwards that it was days before I could speak about it because I couldn't find a way to describe the book that could do it justice. The book should be read in one sitting if possible to experience the full power of the story. This is a work by a master craftsman and an extraordinary human being.



View all my reviews

A couple more reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.com recently.

Donna's review Jul 04, 11


Beautifully written and carefully researched, making the story plausible and passionate. Unlike anything I've read before!


Jun 23, 2011 Carol Thames
I devoured this book. I couldn't get enough of the trials and tribulations Warda went through in her life. After watching a documentary on HBO about African children being shunned by their families for being 'witches' I found this story fascinating.

I noticed a negative review on Amazon by somebody who evidently felt appalled by the heroine of Poor Banished Children feeling that she lacked any redeeming virtues whatsoever. I thought that was a little harsh as I would love to have that kind of courage and determination (I have a terrible feeling I would have completely fallen apart if I had been through a fraction of the ordeals Warda endures during the the course of the story). But then, without wishing to sound sentimental, it is just possible that authors regard their heroes and heroines a little like parents regard their children - however flawed they are, we still can't help loving them :-)

This on American Catholic author Ron Hansen and his experience of anti-Catholic prejudice will ring familiar bells with many Catholics who find themselves facing suspicion and even hostility from people who really should know better.

"The publishing world can make it seem that Christianity in general is benighted, that only uneducated people are interested in it. You can get the feeling that there's a kind of ghetto that you've been put in," he said.

One famous novelist told Hansen to his face that he hated Catholics. "Well, I'm a Catholic," Hansen answered him. "He was somewhat embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as he should have been."

On another occasion a novelist friend suddenly walked out of the room when he found out Hansen was Catholic. A third assumed him to be a "lapsed" Catholic, and upon learning that Hansen actually practiced his faith, said, "That makes me really nervous about you." That makes Hansen wonder aloud: "Can you imagine saying that to anybody of any other religion?"

A famous actress who will remain nameless to protect the guilty, informed me when I was a teenager facing daily anti-Catholic taunts from an embittered teacher, that Catholics who are bullied 'aren't deserving of any sympathy whatsoever.' After all, she added, wrinkling her nose as though having a Catholic in the same room as her made her feel a little queasy, if Catholics are not prepared to conform to society's expectations, they can suffer the consequences.

I suppose I think that one of the tasks of a Catholic writer - or indeed any Catholic for that matter - is to challenge society's assumption that it is still acceptable to discriminate against any minority which refuses to conform to the status quo. Or perhaps to go a little further and ask, not just 'do you really believe you have a right to bully, insult or silence people because you disagree with them?' but even more 'would you really want to live in a world where you had such a right?'

This interview was published in the local paper where I grew up (I spoke to their reporter last time I was visiting my parents). The Warminster Journal does not appear to be online so I have scanned a paper copy in. You need to click on the picture in order to see it at a readable size.

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Take a look at this with Joseph Calleja, the Maltese tenor critics are comparing with Pavarotti. I love what he says about Malta! As he says, we are a tiny island with 7000 years of history and I agree, it is a special place :-)