Robert Waldron’s brief biography of Thomas Merton examines and exposes a man who lived a deeply spiritual life, yes, but also a deeply conflicted one as well. By the use of Jungian psychoanalysis and archetypes, Waldron reads all of the major Merton works (e.g., Seven Storey Mountain, The Sign of Jonas, The Collected Poems, Zen and the Birds of Appetite) but especially all of the many volumes of Merton’s private diaries, and discovers a man, a soul struggling to live la vita nuova in the monastery while being drawn by various sirens out of it.

Edgy, chancy, and at times speculative, Waldron penetrates Merton’s sometimes dense poetry and prose to discover or uncover what was wanting in Merton’s soul-his desire for his own hermitage; his longing for the nurse he fell in love with; his desire to perhaps establish an entirely new monastic foundation.

Merton emerges less a saint than a sinner who never stopped trying to become a saint by becoming who he really was.