FATHER FRANCIS FINN:

Eleven year old Francis was a voracious reader; he read the works of Charles Dickens, devouring Nicholas Nickleby and The Pickwick Papers. From his First Communion at age 12, Francis began to desire to become a Jesuit priest; but then his fervour cooled, his grades dropped, and his vocation might have been lost except for Fr. Charles Coppens. Fr. Coppens urged Francis to apply himself to his Latin, to improve it by using an all-Latin prayerbook, and to read good Catholic books. Fr. Finn credited the saving of his vocation to this advice and to his membership in the Sodality of Our Lady.

Francis began his Jesuit novitiate and seminary studies on March 24, 1879. As a young Jesuit scholastic, he suffered from repeated bouts of sickness and would be sent home to recover. Normally this would have been seen as a sign that he did not have a vocation, yet his superiors kept him on.

During his seminary days Fr. Finn was assigned as prefect of St. Mary's boarding school or "college" in St. Mary's, Kansas (which became the fictional "St. Maure's"). There he learned - often the hard way - how to teach and discipline boys.

One afternoon while supervising a class who were busy writing a composition, Fr. Finn thought of how they represented to him the typical American Catholic boy. With nothing else to do, he took up pencil and paper. "Why not write about such boys as are before me?" he asked himself. In no time at all he had dashed off the first chapter of Tom Playfair. When he read aloud to the class, they loved it! Of course they wanted more.

Francis was finally ordained to the priesthood around 1891. This was the year that Tom Playfair was published. Fr. Finn would write 27 books in all, which would be translated into as many as ten languages, and even into Braille. According to the American Catholic Who's Who, Fr, Finn is "universally acknowledged the foremost Catholic writer of fiction for young people."

The story opens with 10-year old Tom Playfair being quite a handful for his well meaning, but soft-hearted aunt. (Tom's mother has died.) Mr. Playfair decides to ship his son off to St. Maure's boarding school - an all boys academy run by Jesuits - to shape him up, as well as to help him make a good preparation for his upcoming First Communion. Tom's adventures are just about to begin. Life at St. Maure's will not be dull!

In this volume Tom Playfair meets a new boy just arriving at St. Maure's. Percy Wynn has grown up in a family of 10 girls and only 1 boy - himself! His manners are formal, he talks like a book, and he has never played baseball or gone skating, boating, fishing, or even swimming! Yet he has brains, courage and high Catholic ideals. Tom and his buddies at St. Maure's befriend Percy and have a great time as they all work at turning Percy into an all-American Catholic boy.

Young Harry Dee arrives at St. Maure's thin and pale from his painful experiences involving the murder of his rich uncle. In this last book of the three, Tom and Percy help Harry recover from his early trauma - which involves solving "the mystery of Tower Hill Mansion." After many wild adventures, the three boys graduate from St. Maure's and head towards the life work to which God is calling each of them as young men.

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Revised 27 September 2005