Little Saint

Hannah Green and her husband happened upon Conques as they were exploring the ancient pilgrim route from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela. The couple were enchanted by the place, which became something of a second home for them. The village of Conques is quite different from the rest of France; its first language is the native patois, derived from the ancient langue d'oc and its guiding spirit is Saint Foy, a 12-year-old girl who was martyred in nearby Agen in A.D. 303. Hannah Green, a Protestant, came to Conques as "a stranger to saints", but as she discovered more about Foy she entered into a kind of ecstatic association with the saint and with the village she presides over. Little Saint is a beautifully written, sometimes rapturous account of the individual villagers, their sacred bond with the land they mostly live off and their place in the mystical landscape they inhabit.