This warm, richly detailed biography brings the beloved saint alive in all his human and profoundly spiritual dimensions.

Francis Webb is one of Australia's unsung heroes, whose life, like that of Henry Lawson and Christopher Brennan, was a creative triumph over great personal difficulties and public indifference. Although supported by family and close friends, events led Web to find himself amongst the dowtrodden and outcast. Here, he found meaning through writing poetry of amazing religious vision and through reinterpreting Australian history as a quest for truth.

After laughing their way through his classic and beloved depictions of nineteenth-century American life, few readers would suspect that Mark Twain’s last years were anything but happy and joyful. They would be wrong. Contrary to the myth perpetrated by his literary executors Twain ended his life as a frustrated writer plagued by paranoia. He suffered personal tragedies, got involved in questionable business ventures, and was a demanding and controlling father and husband. As Mark Twain: God’s Fool demonstrates, the difficult circumstances of Twain’s personal life make his humorous output all the more surprising and admirable. “Ham[lin] Hill remains among the smartest, most honest, and most humane of Twain scholars—and . . . God’s Fool parades those qualities on every page.” Jeff Steinbrink, Franklin & Marshall College “Fills a great, long-standing need for a thoroughly researched book about Mark Twain’s twilight years. . . . Splendidly, grippingly written and excellently documented. . . . Likely to be a standard work for as long as anyone can foresee.” Choice

God's Fool is a story of the lives of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng who were attached at the chest. To the West they were freaks, to the East they were either evidence of God's glory or proof of his wrath. This novel follows their path from Thailand to Europe, and then on to the USA.