In Elizabeth Seton: American Saint, Catherine O'Donnell has richly contextualized Seton's story in the religious, social, cultural, and economic environments of the revolutionary and early national eras. This biography relates Seton's aim to deepen her experience of God's presence to specific personal situations. It illuminates the complicated, crowded life of an exceptional female Catholic convert while providing a nuanced glimpse into Catholic practices in an understudied era.

By modern standards, Elizabeth Bayley Seton's life was tragically brief, spanning the years 1774 through 1821, yet at one time or another, she fulfilled the roles of daughter, sister, wife, mother, guardian, widow, religious sister, founder, superior, and, importantly, friend. Born to privilege in New York City, the admittedly “ungovernable” (27) daughter of a controversial medical pioneer matured in a household steeped in scientific spirit and casual Protestantism. Betsy Bayley could devour Enlightenment works without fear. Privilege, however, did not spare her from pain and loss. The premature passing of her mother, her father's scientific preoccupations, and an unhappy stepmother colored her youth. The ubiquity of disease and death throughout her life, the financial vagaries of merchant capitalism, and the economic instability of widowhood would influence the development of her spirituality.

Wife of a merchant and mother of five, Elizabeth transitioned from conventional elite womanhood to larger roles hastened largely by her religious commitment. Valuing usefulness, she temporarily assisted the family business and joined Isabella Graham's relief society for poor widows, which acquainted her with poverty before she experienced it. Having outgrown “freeform Christianity” (80), she became an engaged member of the Episcopalian Trinity Church thanks to the expressive preaching of the erudite John Henry Hobart. To cultivate and share God's presence and her awareness of the precariousness of life, Seton launched a women's spiritual circle.

Accompanying her dying husband to Italy, Elizabeth would find compassion and an introduction to Catholicism from his business associates, the Filicchi brothers. Catholic belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the prospect of daily Communion attracted Elizabeth. Only after returning to New York and enduring the theological jousting of her most potent spiritual guides—Hobart, laboring to retain her at Trinity, and Filippo Filicchi, urging her toward Rome—did she formally convert.

Responding to a mix of family, health, and spiritual concerns, with the assistance of Archbishop John Carroll and prominent Catholic friends, Seton soon departed for the more safely Catholic environment of Maryland. Seton's geographic mobility tracks the variable status of Catholics prior to the arrival of masses of Irish and German immigrants, when an impoverished yet privileged and serious female convert could seek spiritual advice directly from exceptional clerics. The republican-minded Carroll with French Sulpicians, emigres escaping the excesses of the French Revolution, guided her religious development and advised her establishing the Sisters of Charity and making decisions about her children.

O'Donnell's social history approach provides a rich and dynamic portrayal of Elizabeth Seton that humanizes the saint and illuminates her struggles. While telling a compelling life story, O'Donnell explores Seton's spirituality not by compartmentalizing it into a few chapters of its principles, but by presenting how it manifested in specific situations, thus allowing for nuance and illustrations of her practicality. Seton's spirituality addressed the need to endure suffering, yet it extended understanding and kindness to even the most unruly students. Occasionally alienated from certain spiritual directors, Seton possessed both assertiveness and spiritual depth that enabled her to follow her conscience. Because she feared at one time that she could not fully live her vows as a Sister of Charity, she was temporarily excused from reciting them. Although a charismatic religious founder, Seton doubted her leadership abilities.

Aimed at addressing educated but not exclusively academic readers, this biography of Elizabeth Seton is a tour de force, a model for religious biography. Additionally, it is a story of the early years of the United States, a time of public health challenges, instances of mutual suspicion and toleration between Catholics and Protestants, living conditions shaped by cities and frontiers, wealth and poverty, and an era replete with loving friendships and difficult relationships. Elizabeth Seton: American Saint offers readers a rich, satisfying, and meticulously researched account of this early American saint's life and her spirituality that responded to human frailties and potential with abundant grace. Through exhaustive archival research, judicious analysis, and skilled storytelling, Catherine O'Donnell has written a most engaging and informative biography of a female saint whose religious beliefs and family needs encouraged her to enlarge women's sphere, whether as laywoman or religious sister. A welcome eight-page “cast of characters” that names and briefly identifies dozens of family, friends, and associates prepares readers for Seton's wide-ranging social network. Within these relationships, readers can explore Seton's life's transitions and her religious development.