I just found a used copy of one of my favorite books from high school, a historical-novel titled Green Darkness by Anya Seton. Almost nothing could have made me happier. Forget reading the hot new novel from a dispossessed 30-year-old; forget the newest theory of time, space, or geopolitics. I want a girl in love with a priest. I want somebody walled up in a castle. Damn it, I want a moat. Green Darkness has it all.
I adore this book, a book I’d first come across the summer I was 16. The lady I worked for that summer, a vice principal who’d broken her leg and for whom I did household chores, depended on the romance novels I’d get her from the local library to keep her sane. It was books or liquor, and books were cheaper and wouldn’t get her fired if anybody found out.
I intend to savor every word of this book as soon as I finish grading this most recent set of papers, and I’m not going to apologize for it, either. I won’t get the cover off a book on postcolonial literature and hide Seton behind borrowed robes. Nope, it’s me, the priest, and the moat right out there for everyone to see.
