The Higher Court

The Higher Court (1911) is a novel of religion and romance by Mary Stewart Daggett, a writer well-known in her community of Pasadena, California whose work has yet to find the audience it deserves.

Father Barry, a young Catholic priest in the Midwest, is beginning to question his vows. A tense meeting with the local bishop, combined with a feeling of mental unease, have shaken Barry’s faith to the core. Meanwhile, in the midst of a heavy blizzard, a letter arrives from Isabel Doan, a friend of Barry’s from before he took his orders—she is stopping by to see him on her way to Southern California, where she is moving with her young son Reginald. When they arrive, Barry is shaken by a series of events—Reginald has come down with a terrible illness; news arrives of the death of his estranged mother; and his love for Isabel threatens to tear down the final vestige of his already fleeting faith. Faced with a choice, Father Barry abandons the cloth and travels to Europe, but he will soon find something stronger than religion to guide his heart back home.

Mary Stewart Daggett’s The Higher Court interrogates tradition in order to get to the truth, while simultaneously illuminating the inexorable changes faced by the nation and world in the early-twentieth century.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Mary Stewart Daggett’s The Higher Court is a newly unearthed classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.