AMERICAN MARTYR: The True Story of Stanley Rother, the American Priest Marked for Death Who Refused to Abandon His People - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

The seminary told him he'd never make it as a priest. Guatemala's death squads told him he had six months to live. He proved them both wrong, and it cost him everything.

Every warning sign told Stanley Rother to run.

His name was on a death list. Men he trained were being dragged from their homes at night and never seen again. His own government warned him he wouldn't survive another six months in Guatemala. So he did what any sane person would do. He got on a plane and flew home to Oklahoma, safe, alive, done.

Then he turned around and flew back.

Not because he was reckless. Because thirteen years earlier, a farm boy who'd once been kicked out of seminary for failing Latin had made a promise to a village of Maya farmers who had nothing, and he intended to keep it, even if it killed him.

It did.

On July 28, 1981, three masked men broke into his rectory in the middle of the night. He didn't run. He didn't beg. He fought, because he'd watched what happened to the ones who went quietly, and he wasn't going to let that be his ending, or theirs.

Thirty-six years later, the Catholic Church would call what happened that night a martyrdom, the first ever officially recognized for an American-born priest. Now, timed to the 2026 nationwide theatrical documentary narrated by Martin Sheen, this is the full, untold story of how an unremarkable Oklahoma farm boy became one of the most extraordinary Americans you've never heard of, and why he chose to die rather than abandon the people who had become his own.

Why you need to read this book:

• The gripping true story behind the 2026 Martin Sheen documentary event, told in full for the first time
• A page-turning account of faith, political terror, and one impossible choice made in the dark
• Built from decades of Vatican investigation records, eyewitness testimony, and firsthand accounts from the men and women who were there
• Goes inside the Guatemalan Civil War's death squads and the American missionaries who refused to look away
• For readers who couldn't put down The Boys in the Boat, Unbroken, or Killers of the Flower Moon

He had every chance to save himself. He chose them instead. Read the true story now, before the theaters go dark.

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