Los elegidos

Upon the death of Friar Dominic Guzman in Rome in the year 1221, a list of three names is locked away with the depositions attesting to Dominic’s beatification, and a copy is sealed in an icon of the Virgin Mary that is eventually carried to New France. This list is the thread that binds the fates of ordinary people caught up in the grand sweep of historical events. It traces the lives of two 19th-century men across three continents, where each finds himself intertwined with a woman who has been visited by the Virgin Mary.

Max Foran is the author of several books on Western history and art history. He is a professor in the University of Calgary’s faculty of communications and culture.