A View from the Ridge

In these pages, West reflects on the chronicle of his life and offers us a lyrical, intimate, and profoundly affirming account of the pilgrimage of a twentieth-century Catholic. From his youthful days as postulant in a strictly orthodox Australian religious community, to his painful decision to leave the order, to his experiences as a soldier in the South Pacific of World War II, to his tentative first attempts at the writing life, and finally to his accomplished later years, West sketches a story that in its travails and joys reflects the evolution of both the Catholic faith in this century and the journey that every believer follows in his or her pilgrimage toward God. Whether watching his novels transformed into successful films in Hollywood or recording, in Rome, his firsthand observations of the struggles between Vatican orthodoxy and reformers in the 1960s, West recounts the lifelong evolution of his personal creed of belief. He recalls the difficult collapse of his first marriage and the birth of a new and stronger one, the joys of fatherhood and grandfatherhood, and the colorful spectrum of friends - including European royalty, high clergy of the Vatican, and flamboyant Australian politicos - who have spiced his long life. He muses upon evil, redemption, and the evolution of the Church he loves.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.