Even if Kaye-Smith, like Chesterton before her (and whose place she and her husband had taken as leaders of the Anglo-Catholic movement after Chesterton’s 1922 conversion), would eventually become Catholic, this novel deals with the primal issues of Catholic and Christian faith necessary to the task of discerning where the fullness of that faith is found. As Johnson and Meszaros write, “Kaye-Smith demonstrates that the choices Christianity presents us with are no ethereal abstractions, but embody themselves repeatedly within the day-to-day reality of every human life.” ...
The family is a great good but not the ultimate good. It is an ordinary, natural, and penultimate good that takes its meaning from the extraordinary, supernatural, and ultimate goods of Christian faith. Taking up one’s cross is necessary to experience the true crowning goodness of the family. This is the dilemma, the crossroads we might say, at which everyone must decide what to do. Sacrifice to the family as to an idol, and it will lead to destruction. Offer up the goods of family to the Lord, and they become an icon.
