Great Lion of God

This book review is largely about the author, and contains some opinion. Flag at your discretion.

There's a good chance you've never heard of Taylor Caldwell. She was a popular author once upon a time, but then just “disappeared.” If you're a regular at book sales or used bookstores, you've probably come across her books before, but likely didn't pay them much attention. Before I get around to my review of Great Lion of God, I'd like to introduce Ms. Caldwell, and spend a few minutes discussing what became of her work.

Who was Taylor Caldwell?
Taylor Caldwell was an English-born American author born in 1900. She began writing as a child, finishing her first novel at the age of twelve. Throughout her life, she published nearly fifty novels and supposedly wrote more than a hundred others. Several of her novels were bestsellers; her most known works include Captains and the Kings, Dynasty of Death, Dear and Glorious Physician, and This Side of Innocence. Most of her works were historical in nature. Her name remained relevant throughout her career into the 1980s. In 1979, she signed a book deal for $3.9 million dollars (that's $12.5 million dollars in the world of 2013)! She was a respected and well-liked author, a multi-millionare; yet you've probably not heard of her. By the time I discovered her ten years ago, all her books were out of print. The Internet was largely silent on her. Few libraries owned her books. Multi-volume encyclopedias of significant world authors failed to mention her. It was as if she had been erased. My interest had been piqued.

What happened to Taylor Caldwell?
I don't mean the person herself (she died of heart failure in 1985), but her work. Why was Caldwell wiped from the annals of literary history, a victim of the fifty cent bin at bookstores from coast to coast? Who knows? But I have a few theories.

Perhaps she was a tad too late
Caldwell wrote exceptionally well for the time when she began her career. Influenced by the works of Tolstoy, Dickens, Balzac, and the Brontes, Caldwell's early novels were cutting edge in the time when Gone with the Wind was immensely popular. With large, meandering historical works that dipped into romance occasionally and were filled cover-to-cover with the purplest of prose, it is no wonder Caldwell became a superstar. When the style became more minimalistic, however, Caldwell remained true to her earlier writing style. As everything shifted toward postmodernism, Caldwell stayed a favorite of her original readers, the parents and grandparents of Generation X.

Perhaps Caldwell's work died with her fan base. Perhaps she just became irrelevant. Perhaps that style was not meant to last the test of time. Or...

Perhaps she was just too controversial
Caldwell was somewhat of a dichotomy. She was very outspoken about her views and she had many of them. And, because her views were often on opposite ends of what is considered the normal spectrum, Caldwell was all-inclusive in being offensive. See if you can piece all these things together: Caldwell was a very outspoken conservative; she hated welfare; she was Catholic; she believed in reincarnation; she was pro-abortion; she was a conspiracy theorist (more on this later); she believed all religion led to the same god; she hated feminism—was disgusted by women in general; she was an environmentalist; she was anti-Semitic.

Caldwell herself couldn't make up her mind about some of these issues (mostly dealing with reincarnation and religion), but that didn't keep her from being vocal as she flip-flopped from side to side. How vocal was Caldwell? Well, let's look at some of her own words about women taken from various interviews:

There's no doubt about it—women are the inferior sex, in every way. There's never been any woman genius—never. With all the opportunity in the world—all the leisure in the world, all the shelter—if women had any genius, it would've come out. It never did. There's been no woman Michelangelo, or Beethoven, or Mozart.

It's a woman's place to serve a man.

Women shouldn't have the right to vote. In ancient Rome, women had the right to vote and became active in government. That was the end of Rome. The one good thing Mussolini did was to take away the right of women to vote.

Perhaps she was erased for what she knew

Captains and the Kings

Perhaps you don't care

On to the review...

Great Lion of God

Great Lion of God

Great Lion of God

the vast and verdant rolling hills of a garden floating in a golden mist where flowers glitter with silvery dew and where sonorous voices come from rosy lips