Books like The Rose Ring — picked by fans

As a fan of Catholic history and historical fiction, this story is surely one of my favorites. Set during the Great War, WWI, twenty-one-year-old Julia has her heart set on meeting her future husband. She makes and purchases expensive gifts for him–she's ready. Surely, she will meet her beloved soon.

When Julia is sent overseas with the Red Cross, she finds herself caring for injured soldiers in a field hospital in France. As she matures, Julia begins giving the gifts she'd made or purchased to the injured soldiers. A touching addition to this book was the addition of beautiful sonnets between Julia and her beloved. 

In Pieces is the first of a two-book series. The romance develops in this book while subplots thicken. I was quickly drawn to the characters and early American setting. I felt immersed in the ambience of the Boston waterfront during the Federalist years. Themes of redemption, forgiveness and understanding weave through the novel and affect more than the hero and heroine. For example, the hero’s family grapples with his growing interest in Catholicism. As the love story reaches resolution, another subplot deepens: a need for American spies to help protect the young country. I ended the book feeling as though the characters had become friends. In Pieces is subtitled Molly Chase Book 1 and fits the Christian historical fiction genre as well as Catholic historical romance.

I didn’t realize Playing By Heart was a Young Adult book until I finished reading. I was too engrossed in the story about a musical prodigy in 18th century Italy. The romance arc is central but subdued, as the heroine is still a young teenager when this coming-of-age story begins. Her behavior is shaped by family, faith and cultural restrictions. The story placed me in the world of Italian nobility as I followed the heroine and her sisteras they received above-average educations for their time. (Their father has a reason.) Mature adults will enjoy this book. At least I did! I was delighted to learn the main character and her sister are based on real sisters who were 18th century Italian musical and academic prodigies.

A person needs self-knowledge before loving another. That’s true for the hero and heroine of A World Such As Heaven Intended, an American Civil War novel by Amanda Lauer. They meet briefly at the start of the book. Both realize their lives have been changed by the encounter, even though the heroine is loyal to the Confederacy and the hero to the Union. The hero and heroine then are separated. That allowed me to follow each one’s journey as they navigated life in a war-torn country. The tension caused by different loyalties remains strong when they reunite. But they’re thrown into a life-and-death situation that made me wonder if they’d find their happy ending! This novel is first in the Heaven Intended series.

I apologise for recommending an untranslated Italian book on an English-language website, but it is a testament to this book's sheer importance that I do so.

Coco is a Vatican archivist, and his employer is this book's protagonist. Despite this, I admire his honesty and decision not to defend the Vatican. His book destroys two myths: 1. Hitler’s Pope and 2. that the Vatican actively sought to save Jews during the Holocaust. I found this book fresh, beautifully written, and I admire the depth of research. Yet the book seeks to neither condemn nor exalt the Catholic’s role in the Holocaust.

I found Coco’s conclusion that the church neither collaborated with fascism nor actively sought to help those persecuted the fairest and most compelling conclusion about the Vatican’s role during the Second World War. I highly recommend this book and hope it will be translated soon. 

The leading expert on the Holy See during World War II, Ventresca offers us an immensely readable and authoritative biography of the elusive Eugenio Pacelli. In many ways, it surpasses all previous biographies in its comprehensive and convincing analysis of its central subject, Pope Pius XII. Ventresca adeptly bores through the polemical and problematic arguments that encompass the decades-long “Pius Wars” and offers us a balanced portrait of Pacelli, who is neither a condemned reprobate nor an exalted saint. Rather, Ventresca shows that Pacelli was a man of his time, burdened with nearly insurmountable challenges, who nevertheless consistently preferred to address them through a diplomatic path of prudence and caution that always placed the needs of the institutional Church before all other concerns.  

Mention has often been made of the extent to which Marshall McLuhan was a devout adherent of the Catholic faith. But little has been known about how he viewed the place of religion in the world particularly with reference to the fate of the Catholic Church. This carefully selected collection of McLuhan’s writings on religion provides one with clarifying insights into his views on a broad range of Church-related issues including the nature of conversion, the spiritualism of youth, the impact of technology on liturgy, and Vatican II. Overall, by revealing that McLuhan viewed faith as a sense, the volume illuminates the connections he made between religion and media.  

I read this book the summer I became dean. 

I wanted to get a sense of the recent history of American Catholic higher education, and this book offered a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of American Catholic higher education—just what I was looking for and felt I needed as an administrator at a Catholic university.

Stourton is the best sort of biographer; I appreciate his candour and directness.

Despite clearly admiring the now-Saint John Paul II, he portrays vividly the limitations of this conservative and retrograde pope whose long reign saw the church battle with modernity. John Paul II’s inability to listen to women, engage in genuine dialogue with other faiths, his authoritarianism, and propensity to hide scandals within the church are eloquently examined in this biography.

I particularly like the character sketches and Stourton’s ability to poke some fun at this very dour and remarkably earnest pope. What could have been a dry subject is a vivacious and constructively critical sketch of one of history's longest pontificates. 

Gah! Virgins! I should mention that this book was actually written in the 80s and flashes back to the 50s, but in the spirit of this list (and simply because I flipping love it), I’m including it here. Peggy and Sean are two good little Catholic teens navigating their senior year of high school. Sean is slated to enter the priesthood upon graduation, testing the limits of the pair’s carnal restraint in the final days of their relationship. I don’t think there’s a book in the world that has influenced my storytelling more than this one. It’s hot, hilarious, and heartbreaking… and pretty much serves as the blueprint for my own book. Highly recommend.