Anyone else remember the author Taylor Caldwell?

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In another thread on this forum, I had cause to mention Taylor Caldwell’s book “Dialogs with the Devil”. I found that to be a very powerful book, and that, along with her novel “The Listener” got me on a brief period of reading her books. It was enjoyable to me at the time to be reading works with such a Catholic outlook, and now I’m wondering if anyone else remembers her or has read her books?

FWIW, she had a novel “Captains and the Kings” that was made into a TV mini-series in 1976.
 
I don’t remember the name of the book, but when I was young, I read a murder mystery she wrote, which was not her normal “gig” according to my mother. It was about a bunch of people snowed in a lodge during a storm. A “who done it.” I enjoyed the book.
 
I have “Dear and Glorious Physician”, (a novel about St. Luke), but I haven’t read it yet.
 
I have a book of hers - one of my parent’s, “The Great Lion of God”. It’s an interesting little dramatisation the life of Saint Paul.
 
I really enjoyed her books, and read them again when I run across them 🙂
 
“Grandmother and the Priests” is quite good. It’s on Kindle. The narrator recalls when she was a young girl, living with a wealthy and free-spirited grandmother. 11 priests who have dinner with her each recall the moment that was the greatest test of their faith, so it’s kind of a short story anthology wrapped up with a narrative frame. The stories are really gripping.

In the 1970s, she went off the track (as did many others) theologically, and IMO politically. but her early books were quite good.
 
I read several of her books in my teens, the ones which have stuck in my mind are: “Great Lion of God” and especially “Great and Glorious Physician”. I think the story “Great Lion of God” about St. Paul made the biggest impression on me when I was about 15 years old. Her background information and research were excellent. Never read her later books, but those two stuck in my mind, and I still remember them fondly over 50 years later!
 
I too was a teenager when I read “Great Lion of God”. A very good book.
 
DaddyGirl said:
I remember that book about her: *The Search for a Soul - Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives * when she gets hypnotized and remembers all her past lives.
Very interesting.

Her books have a Catholic outlook?
It surprises me that you say that, since she’s not Catholic…and she was known to be into stuff like reincarnation etc and I think she was brought up Protestant.

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I don’t know about her having a “Catholic outlook” but I do know that at age 15, I was fascinated by the historical fiction concerning both St. Paul and St. Luke. At that age, I wasn’t as well educated concerning the Faith as I am 50 years later!! I found the books excellent background to my Bible reading, though! As for her “past lives”, I had heard about that many years later, and was sad that she had gone so far out in the “outfield” & away from Christian teachings. I never read anything about them, and certainly didn’t read her stories of her past lives! THAT much I knew better than to get into!! I think her Grandmother was Catholic and she was raised Catholic at an early age, but have no idea why she got into “hypnotic regression” and thought she’d been a Queen of Egypt, according to a news article I read. Of course she wasn’t a peasant in her past, but always a noble or Queen. So much for that type of “hypnotic regression”. It is a good tool for psychiatrists to use to find early childhood abuse or trauma which the patient refuses to remember, but some people simply go too far! That type of “regression”, going back centuries, is just a “make believe” or wishful thinking, IMHO.
 
I think I viewed her as having a “Catholic outlook” based on her novels “Dialog with the Devil” and “The Listener”, especially the last story. “Dear and Glorious Physician” was good, but I didn’t get to finish it. It was my mom’s, I started it over Christmas break and couldn’t take it with me back to college, and didn’t get around to picking it up again over the next summer. I was less enthralled with “I, Judas”, which is the “Gospel according to Judas”, penned as he is preparing to hang himself. Some interesting insights, and I’m convinced that if Judas had repented he would have been a greater saint than any of the other apostles. Still, it’s not the first one of her books I’d recommend to someone.
 
I read quite a few of her books as a young adult. I liked them. They were not perfect. It is funny I was just thinking bout them this week but couldn’t remember her name until I saw this thread (I remember best the books about Luke and Paul)
 
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