From Union Square to Rome

Here is an early work of Dorothy Day, who tells the story of her conversion from Communist journalist to Catholic Worker. Much of what she wrote here in 1938 would be taken up in her book "Loaves and Fishes", written more than a decade later. This first recounting of her faith journey, however, has a freshness and immediacy that the later work does not share. Part of this is because she write largely in the "second person" — that is, she addresses her book to her brother, making an account of her heart and her life to this younger sibling with whom she shared so many ideals but not the Christian faith. Of course, this is part of the genre.