Plot
Such Is My Beloved takes place in a city experiencing the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The main character is Father Stephen Dowling, a young, exuberant priest searching for the meaning of God’s love. Dowling decides to try to help two young prostitutes, Ronnie and Midge, turn their lives around. The priest goes to great lengths to try to help them, such as giving them money and clothes, while trying to find them jobs. As the story progresses, Dowling becomes increasingly involved in the girls’ lives. He exhibits agape for the prostitutes and does everything he can to help them redeem their lives. His relationship with the prostitutes is condemned by his rich, self-righteous parishioners and his bishop. In the end, the girls are arrested for prostitution and sent away. Dowling feels that he has failed the girls and becomes grief-stricken. His anguish over the girls’ fate causes him to lose his sanity and subsequently he is removed from the church and sent away to an insane asylum. In the end, Dowling has a beautiful moment of clarity in which he sacrifices his own sanity to God to spare the girls’ souls. The novel closes on his realization of the purely Christian love he bears for Ronnie, Midge and for all of humanity.
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