The Orchards of Perseverance: Conversations With Trappist Monks About God, Their Lives, and the World

The Orchards of Perseverance presents a refreshing profile of ten monks of the Trappist Order who live in a small community at the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux in Northern California. This oral history follows the life of each monk over the course of many years, from their "call to God" to their first entry into the community and the subsequent adjustment to the monastic life. The monks speak candidly in this book about the psychological trauma associated with leaving society and attempting to discover their true "self." Their frank observations about God, how they view life outside the monastic gate and the effect of world events, and how they think the world views them, are interwoven with humor and insight that offers hope and inspiration in a confusing world.

With 450 acres of prune and walnut orchards as their livelihood, blue denim is just as prevalent as monastic robes while these men follow a daily schedule of prayer and work from sunup to sundown. A wide cross-section of the community is represented, from the novice master whose job it is to interview and nurture every man who asks to enter, to the abbot who talks about the difficulties of his title.

Author David D. Perata first went to the monastery in the latter sixties while in grammar school, working out in the orchards with his best friend Joe and having a ball hunting rabbits and driving jeeps and tractors with the monks. Over the course of some thirty years, he has returned to the monastery most every year or so, enjoying its peaceful atmosphere away from the hustle and bustle of society. When the abbot of New Clairvaux recently gave him an opportunity to photograph their life and interview the monks, the result is this rare, intimate look into the monastic enclosure that topples these men off their spiritual pedestals and reveals them as human beings like the rest of us. Far from the mysterious stereotypes we all have had of monasteries and monks, the spiritual struggle and perseverance of these men underscores the simple fact that they are ordinary people who have simply chosen an extraordinary lifestyle.

Illustrated with over eighty-five archival and contemporary photos, The Orchards of Perseverance entertains while arousing a wealth of thought-provoking questions and ideas that readers can incorporate into their daily life.

David D. Perata was born in Alameda, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area on New Year's Eve, 1953. The summer between his seventh and eighth grades, he went to The Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux Trappist Monastery with his best friend Joe to work in the orchards. This experience would later serve as the germ for writing this book about the monk's lives.

David lived in Alameda until 1972, when he moved to Oakland for five years and began a songwriting and performing career with Joe. The duo played small clubs in and around the Bay Area, going to Los Angeles periodically with demo tapes of their songs.

In June of 1980 he started working for Amtrak as a porter on their long-distance passenger trains. In April of '81 he moved to L.A. to pursue a solo songwriting career, and began a cycle of working on the trains for five days at a stretch and having five off to write and record his songs. Railroad work was seasonal, beginning around June each year and being laid off in September when the summer rush ended. After three years of this, and meeting his wife Pamela on the train during a last-minute Christmas trip, he left Amtrak. By this time, however, he had already met the black Pullman porters, dining car chefs and waiters who provided the inspiration and material for his first book, Those Pullman Blues: An Oral History of the African American Railroad Attendant (Twayne Publishers, New York, cloth, 1996. Madison Books, Maryland, paperback, 1999).

While working on Pullman Blues, the music career was abandoned as being too unsteady. He and his wife moved from L.A. to the Sierra Nevada foothills above Sacramento, California, where he did photo and feature story work for numerous magazines while working on the railroad book. Those Pullman Blues was finally published in May of 1996. The media took a liking to the unusual subject matter of the new book, and the author did radio and TV shows across the country along with a Barnes & Noble book tour.

In February of 1997, David organized the Pullman Blues Tour, taking two of the retired Pullman porters from his book across the country aboard private railroad cars. Sponsored by Amtrak, The A. Philip Randolph Institute, NAACP and other corporate sponsors, the cars were sattached to the rear of Amtrak trains beginning in Oakland, California, and ending in Chicago. The tour was a great success, acquainting the public with this aspect of history and the invaluable role of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Early in 1998 - in close cooperation with Abbot Thomas Davis of New Clairvaux Abbey - David began writing The Orchards of Perseverance: Conversations with Trappist Monks About God, Their Lives and the World. The author is planning a cross-country speaking tour in 2000, beginning in California in January.