Patricia Marks

Making Our Home With God is a collection of travel meditations that pair New Testament readings with glimpses of the New Jerusalem in such diverse places as Iona, Chartres, Samburu, and Antarctica, as well as in one's own home. Marks invites the reader on a pilgrimage that entails taking nothing-no extra coat, shoes, or bag, only an open heart and mind-on a journey home to life in Christ, where our hearts welcome others who hunger and thirst for what we may take for granted. Those new companions, who are Christ in His many faces and forms, change our lives forever.Patricia Marks, now retired from Valdosta State University as Regents Professor of English, was ordained a deacon at Christ Episcopal Church in 2003. She and her husband, an astrophysicist, live in Valdosta, Georgia, where they continue to research, write, and publish.

On October 15, 1880, with great excitement and fanfare, two Sarah Bernhardts set sail for New York from Le Havre for a theatrical tour of the United States. One wanted to introduce French culture to a backward country, and the other wanted to make money. As an actress, she behaved in a fashion that amused and scandalized her audiences, and as a woman, she was an unwed mother and a shrewd businessperson. Bernhardt's multiple personas and "otherness" were what fascinated the American public; her name, her eccentricities, and her genius had already made her world famous. Sarah Bernhardt's first American theatrical tour, from her arrival in 1880 to her return to Europe in May 1881, is chronicled here. She traveled as far west as Kansas City and as far south as New Orleans, all the while sparking cultural commentary about her performances, her artwork, and her lifestyle. This book provides an overview of the contemporary reviews, caricatures and satires, considers Bernhardt's reception by the American press and American audiences, and discusses the way in which the Bernhardt iconography was created and the assumptions that underlie it.