Donald Brown is living in… well, let’s not say a slum—the denizens, though poor and mostly recent immigrants, are good, clean, hardworking people making the best of what little they have. But Brown is plainly from somewhere else entirely. He takes on the role of a counselor—although those who come to him with their problems see him not as any kind of authority but as a dear and trusted friend.
It comes out, slowly enough, that Brown’s family is rather wealthy and Brown is, or was, the pastor of St. Timothy’s, one of the most exclusive churches in New York City. His doctor told him that, unless he gets out of it and takes a long, restful vacation, he’s fast on his way to a mental breakdown.
The doctor, and Brown’s fiancée Helena, were thinking someplace sunny and gay—the French Riviera, perhaps. But that’s not for Brown. While not an ascetic by any means, he dispenses with all the fineries and gewgaws that never meant much to him to begin with and settles down to a slow-paced, casual work among people who need him terribly more than the St. Timothy’s crowd ever did.
The one dark little cloud over Brown’s head is that he’s lost Helena. Surely, that patrician, borne and bread to high society, could never get along with Brown’s new way of living. But there’s he’s wrong. Resistant at first, she’s won over by the neighbors in Brown’s tenement court and begins to see beyond the funny accents and customs to the true worth inside them all. She marries Brown to help in his work.
No inscription.
Random Book Synopses, or Something 