James Martin has led a thoroughly modern life: from a lukewarm childhood Catholicism, to the Wharton School of Business, to the executive fast track at General Electric, to the Jesuits, to a media career in Manhattan. But at every step along the way he has been accompanied by special friends—the saints of the Catholic Church. These holy men and women are not just historical figures to him. Martin’s attachment to them is real and personal. The saints have guided him. He convincingly shows how the saints can be our friends too.

Martin’s saintly friends come from the whole of Christian history—from St. Paul to John XXIII— and they include Thérèse of Lisieux, Joan of Arc, Ignatius Loyola and other beloved figures. They accompany the author on a pilgrimage that includes stops in a sunlit square of a French town, a quiet retreat house on a New England beach, the housing projects in inner-city Chicago, the sprawling slums of Nairobi, and a gorgeous Baroque church in Rome. As James Martin’s inspiring, witty, and surprising account unfolds, we see how saints can help us to find our way in the world.