An American in Paradise
Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers
by Mark Gruber, O.S.B.
Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002
(208 pages; $18.00, paperback)
reviewed by Mike Aquilina
Mark Gruber has done what most Christians can only read about in books of ancient history. He spent a year in the Sahara desert, sharing the life of the desert fathers—men who have, for the last two millennia, followed the austere way of John the Baptist.
What began as fieldwork for a doctorate in anthropology soon became a pilgrimage and ended in a profound personal transformation. In a most remarkable book, Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers . . .
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