Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 - Hardcover

Raymond L. Flynn Mayor of Boston, 1984-1993 and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, 1993-1997After reading "Fire & Roses," a provocative and riveting book about a revealing period in Boston's history, I must ask the question, how did Boston's leaders of the time, these so-called proper Bostonians, deserve their title? Why was Boston called the 'Hub of the Universe' and the 'Athens of America'? Terms like 'bigot' and 'virulent anti-Catholic' seem more like it. As Nancy Schultz rightly makes clear, in many ways this story of the burning of the Charlestown convent in 1834 remains the story of today's America.

From its founding in 1826, the convent on Mt Benedict had been roumoured to conceal physical and sexual abuse of nuns and female boarding students within its walls. In 1832 Rebecca Theresa Reed allegedly escaped and wrote a tale of women held against their will and subjected to cruel treatment by convent authorities. A series of anti-Catholic lectures by the Reverend Lyman Beecher stoked existing fears of a papal plot and these lectures eventually lead to a riot during which a drunken mob burnt the convent to the ground. The arsonists' ringleader became a local folk hero. Based on years of research this book offers a tale of violence and redemption, from an era when anit-papist diatribes were the stuff of standing-room only lectures; independent women were feared and reviled; and a new nation was struggling with its own identity.