The Man in The Sycamore Tree

The good times and hard life of Thomas Merton.

Edward Rice, a writer-photographer whose friendship with Merton began when both were students at Columbia, not only tells the story of Thomas Merton from his childhood through his monastic years up to his fateful Far Eastern trip, but he writes more frankly and realistically than Merton, as a Trappist, was able to of his subject's "good times" and "hard life". The illustrations from Merton's pre-monastery days, including photographs of student demonstrations at Columbia in the 1930's and some most un-monastic drawings by Merton himself, add a contemporary relevance and dimension to a book that the title page modestly terms "An Entertainment, with photographs". It is that--and much more.