Summary
A defrocked theological prodigy, John Fairmeadow—his surname a sly Calvinist joke—wanders into a cathedral of pine and axe where the cross is a buzz-saw and incense is sawdust. Pattie, a barefoot psalm in flannel, needs a priest to bury her father, felled like Goliath by a cedar. Fairmeadow’s clerical collar is imaginary, yet the camp’s hunger for sacrament is so fierce that the forest itself ordains him. Between moon-shine revivals and knife-edged sermons, he becomes the axis on which salvation and violence revolve: converting drunks, rescuing an abandoned child, and enraging Jack Flack, a lumber-king Herod who keeps his woman like a trophy buck. When blood soaks the sawdust, Fairmeadow must testify for a killer who acted in self-defense, discovering that conscience is heavier than any log. The men he has saved build him a chapel of raw beams; the woman he loves demands the truth. In a finale that smells of pine tar and chrism, the prodigal son is clothed in real vestments by a bishop-father who rides in like an avenging angel; two marriages are blessed, the church is consecrated, and the forest exhales grace.
Synopsis
John Fairmeadow has been expelled from a theological seminary because of his evident unfitness for the ministry. He goes West and finally winds up in a lumber camp. Pattie, the pet of the woodsmen, is praying for a parson to come perform her father's burial service--he was killed by a falling tree. Fairmeadow's clerical appearance makes his arrival seemingly providential, for Pattie declares when she beholds him that her prayers have been answered, so Fairmeadow is compelled to conduct the burial service and thereafter pose as a parson. Having gone to the woods to fight out his own battles, Fairmeadow gains help for himself in helping others. The "parson's" reputation as an exhorter has traveled to a nearby camp and he is urged to go there and conduct revival services. Jack Flack, the "boss" of the neighboring camp, objects to Fairmeadow's activities and undertakes to physically expel him from the community. In this encounter Flack comes off second best, and Fairmeadow's record is enhanced. Flack is living with a girl he has enticed from the camp where Fairmeadow makes his headquarters. This girl is moved by Fairmeadow's sermons to leave her environments and return home. She leaves her baby where Fairmeadow will come upon it in the woods, and when the "parson" takes it in his arms and carries it to his home camp, she follows. Going directly to Pattie's home, Fairmeadow is arranging for the care of the child when its mother is discovered by Pattie looking in at the window. Thus mother and child are reunited and Fairmeadow and Pattie go with her to her father's home, where a reconciliation is effected. Flack comes to the camp to find the girl and have vengeance upon the "parson." One of the converts Fairmeadow has made kills Flack in a fight, and the "parson'" witnesses that the deed was committed in self-defense. While Fairmeadow has been at the neighboring camp, his congregation has built him a church and cabin to live in, and soon after his return the "parson" is called upon to perform a marriage. Then it is that he makes clear his standing; that he has studied for the ministry but has never been ordained. When one of the lumbermen leaves the woods to visit his mother, he goes to Fairmeadow's father, who is a Bishop, and explains how matters stand with his son. The Bishop hastens to the lumber camp, ordains his son and performs two marriages, one of which unites Fairmeadow and Pattie.
