Although Charles William Gordon considered himself primarily a Presbyterian minister, as the writer Ralph Connor he is one of the most popular and best-selling novelists Canada has ever had. His melodramatic, didactic romances of Christianity in action enjoyed a phenomenal vogue in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. For over twenty years, from the late 1890s through the early 1920s, unrestrained enthusiasm from all segments of society made the prolific Connor Canada's most widely read writer. Wilfrid Laurier, Herbert Asquith, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson cherished his friendship and counted themselves among his most avid readers. Ironically, Connor's extraordinary popularity was matched only by his equally extraordinary fall from favor.

Connor was born in the Indian Lands Presbyterian manse in Glengarry County, Canada West (which later became Ontario). His father, the Reverend Daniel Gordon, "a fiery Highlander," and especially his "saintly" mother, Mary Robertson Gordon, are repeatedly...