Why does a gifted boy from a privileged Establishment background decide, at the age of twelve, to spend his life as a priest? And what moves him, after six happy years in the Anglican priesthood, to enter the alien world of Roman Catholicism?

In a gripping narrative full of humor and self-directed irony, John Jay Hughes tells of the loss of his mother at age six, entry into the Catholic Church at the cost of estrangement from his beloved Anglican priest-father, his lifelong search for God in prayer, and his joy in priesthood, 'all I ever wanted from age twelve.'