Books published by publisher Harcourt Brace and Company ( 2013 )

Lighthouses have guided sailors, adventurers, and dreamers throughout the world for centuries. And a very important lighthouse stands tucked beneath the great gray span of the George Washington Bridge on the Hudson River. This timeless and thoroughly charming story reveals how the proud little red lighthouse learned that even though it was very small, it was still mighty. "Told in the age-old rhythmic style of folklore, this story of modern times is unusually successful."--Saturday Review

In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's first book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a Trappist. Although his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions, Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble, and concrete. The best reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both."