Love in the Eternal City
Rebecca W. Martin
Chrism Press, 2024; 302 pp., $18.99 (paperback)
Review of Love in the Eternal City
The quest among Catholic and other Christian readers for “clean romance” suggests that audiences are lucky to find a modern romance novel free of pornography. If we take this approach, we may not be unrealistic about mainstream culture, but we hold fiction to too low a standard. A romance novel should be a good novel in the same ways as any other: a well-crafted, enjoyable plot; characters who feel like real people; a setting with depth and vibrancy; themes, including moral themes, integrated smoothly into the story.
If the above sounds like too much to expect from a contemporary romance, Rebecca W. Martin’s debut novel Love in the Eternal City is a welcome counterpoint.
The present-tense, first-person narration alternates between Elena Gattino, temporarily relocating to Rome from her native Wisconsin, and Benedikt (“Beni”) Rechsteiner, a Swiss Guard with a privileged background and an uncertain future. Martin draws on her own Midwestern roots and memories of studying in Rome.
All the major characters are devout Catholics, which, combined with the setting in Rome, infuses the story naturally with a thoroughly Catholic atmosphere. This is not a story in which characters make didactic asides to one another or the audience, but their Catholicism is shown as an essential element of their life, in details such as praying the Rosary while walking or remarks like, “Our Lord drew you together at his cross.” More substantially, faith plays a crucial role in the navigation of sufferings. A dramatic instance appears in an early chapter, when Elena, haunted by the betrayal that prompted her to upend her life, offers a heartfelt prayer during Mass in St. Peter’s:
I don’t know what you have in mind for me in these next six months, but I want to accept your plan. I can’t keep living in fear like this. So here’s my promise. Whatever you send my way, if you show me it’s your will, I’ll embrace it, I’ll throw myself into it wholeheartedly. Whatever it is. Just show me my path, and I’ll walk it.
Her plea is followed by peace as she resolves, “Whatever these months hold, I will trust.”
Faith also interacts with romance. Beni and Elena each note the other’s active piety among the first qualities that draw them to each other, and, as they take tentative steps toward a committed relationship, keep their faith as a compass holding them steady amid winds of uncertainties. As Beni says, “We met by chance and we’re having fun, but I don’t want to leave it at fun… I want us to tackle this the way we ought to, like a man and woman of God.” The peril of carnal temptation is not ignored—an entire chapter is devoted to Beni fighting it off—but Martin goes far beyond “clean” to show what a romance animated by faith can be: joyful and tenacious as needed, both human and “like a flame, always pointing toward heaven.”
Initially, both Beni and Elena believe that their personal troubles make a new relationship difficult if not impossible. When, in spite of everything, a combination of Providence and their friends’ gentle prompting draws them together, both are gradually moved to face their fears. “Healing never happens alone,” Elena’s motherly supervisor tells her, summarizing much of what follows. Martin strikes a delicate balance: The pains of PTSD, family tensions, a loved one’s death or mental illness, etc. are taken seriously and never papered over; yet the overall tone remains warm and buoyant, thanks especially to the wholesome bonds among the characters and the ever-present splendor of Rome.
The cast’s lively range of personalities, and the community among them, form a heart at the novel’s core. Little moments of laughter or poignancy evoke the simple power of human connection in a way that feels deeply real, as though they could be one’s own memories of family and friends. This does not imply any pretense that everyone is decent, or that anyone is without faults; no one is let off the hook for his or her sins, yet no one is demonized either, or even made to embody just one personality trait. The diversity of characters also showcases the variety of cultures represented at this global crossroads.
Rome, like Catholicism, infuses the story naturally and thoroughly and appears in vivid, lovingly rendered detail. From the first page, where Elena disembarks from a taxi in St. Peter’s Square, affection for the Eternal City glows from the text: “It’s been years since I walked the cobblestones or stepped into the strong curves of Bernini’s colonnade. I’ve changed, but this beautiful city hasn’t.” St. Peter’s Basilica figures prominently, but many other landmarks are also featured; for instance, Elena and Beni’s sister Rianna take an excursion that includes St. John Lateran, the Scala Santa, and a restaurant built into the ruins of the Empress Helena’s palace.
Even beyond tourist or pilgrim highlights, the cultural feel of Rome comes through strongly: midday closings for pranzo, a crowded metro, a little restaurant on the Tiber. Elena provides an apt summary: “This is why I came back, this mesmerizing mix of ancient and new, sacred and secular, the brown line of the Tiber and the lush trees of the Gianicolo alongside the soaring marble churches and modern-built business centers.” Fittingly, as her words suggest, the atmosphere is contemporary as well as ancient, well rooted in the twenty-first century, from video calls and overseas phone plans to surveillance tech and issues of cyber-privacy.
In fact, these characters and their ancient and new world are full of such life and potential that Martin is far from finished with them. Love in the Eternal City is the first of a projected Swiss Guard Romance trilogy. Might the Catholic arts and literary renaissance include a renaissance of Catholic romance? Time will tell, but the appearance of a book like Martin’s offers reason for hope.