St. Anthony of Padua has been a friend to millions of Catholics asking his help to recover lost objects. But few seem to know much about his remarkable life. The son of a knight in the court of Portugal’s king, he renounced his heritage of wealth and power to become a Franciscan priest. In the years to come, he earned international fame as a preacher, reformer, miracle worker, champion of the poor, and Doctor of the Church.

A generation ago, the American Catholic novelist John Edward Beahn presented Anthony’s life and legends in a biographical novel, A Rich Young Man: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Anthony of Padua, published in 1953. This imaginative re-telling of the saint’s story, based on historical records and traditions, now comes to life again in the TAN Legend series of biographical fiction.

The tale unfolds in the epic setting of medieval Europe of the thirteenth century. Monarchs, courtiers, churchmen, knights, nobles, and serfs maneuver like chess pieces in an elaborate game of alliances and conflicts between Church and state, Christian and Muslim, Catholic and heretic. Anthony’s story takes us from North Africa, where divine providence saved the young friar from his mistaken zeal for martyrdom, to Italy and France, where his extraordinary gifts and heroic passion for God blazed a path to the rescue and conversion of countless souls.

This TAN Legend edition of A Rich Young Man: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Anthony of Padua paints a rich, fascinating portrait of an astonishing saint who turned the medieval Christian world upside down.