Making waves in Hollywood in 1963 as a major motion picture starring Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skala, “Lilies of the Field” first appeared as a gentle novella, a triumph for author William E. Barrett.
Homer Smith, a black man from South Carolina, was just honorably released from the Army and has decided to travel around the West for a while before returning home. He carefully saved his pay packets and had plenty of money for his travels, but every so often the urge to work strikes him and he stops for a while to do odd jobs. He’s never seen anything like the countryside he’s been passing through, and he enjoys taking every minute he can to appreciate everything around him.
One day while driving through a remote community two miles outside of Piedras near the Rocky Mountains, Homer spots three women building a fence. One is holding the post in the hole, another is holding the crossbar in place, and the third is driving in the nails. They seem to be getting along all right, but he can’t stand the thought of someone working that hard to finish a project he could do himself. He stops and offers his services to find that the nuns are from Germany and speak very little English. Language barriers notwithstanding, he finds himself up on the roof of the nuns’ home, fixing shingles.
He really has no intention of staying, but something about the nuns draws him in and he enjoys their company. He stays the night, and the next morning is given a task that seems impossible: the nuns want to build a church. A building on their land has burned down and they think that the existing foundation would be perfect for a church, and they expect him to build it. He’s never done a thing like that before, but with the nuns’ belief that God gave them a gift when He sent them Homer, he feels like he has to stay and do the job.
Miracles occur during the building of the chapel, from the donation of every brick they would need to the friendship that grows between the nuns and Homer. A beautiful story of faith, acceptance, and God’s love for His children, I heartily recommend this book.
(This book was published in 1962 by Warner Books.)