Listening to "Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Fr. Nicola Yanney"

I think I've decided that my favorite type of Orthodox book is the kind that gives as much information as possible about the lives of saints. Whenever I read the paragraph-long lives of saints that appear in places like The Prologue from Ochrid, I always have so many questions! There are so many saints about whom we know just bits and pieces, a few small facts about how they lived and often the most about how they died. I am always hungry for more details, all the elements of a saint's story that added up to a life of becoming more and more like Christ.

Imagine my delight, then, when on the same day I received two such books: an audiobook review copy of Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Fr. Nicola Yanney and, in the mail, a book ordered by my husband just a few days before, The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal. We are still reading and loving the second; this review is about the first, which I so enjoyed listening to while doing chores over the course of a week.

Fr. Nicola is a person whom I think every Orthodox Christian in America should know about! His story opened my eyes to many aspects of American Orthodox history that I had never heard about. I didn't know what it was like for a young man living in a small village in Lebanon in the late 1800s, or what he would have experienced immigrating to America in a steamship with his new wife, Martha. Learning about the experience of immigrants made me think about how blessed I am to be born in a country with religious freedom and access to opportunities. As a newly-married nineteen-year-old, Fr. Nicola left his home not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't safely raise a family there. He knew he would probably never be able to return to his beloved homeland. The book describes the difficult two-part sea voyage and the tense wait to see if he and Martha would pass inspection at Ellis Island and be deemed healthy enough to enter America. I felt like I was recovering pieces of American history that I really should have known about.

I was intrigued by how much detail The St. Raphael Clergy Brotherhood was able to compile to tell the story of Fr. Nicola's experience in Nebraska, as a peddler and then a farmer, and finally as a missionary priest with a massive territory (nearly all of the middle third of the contiguous U.S.). His story reminds readers of the gift it is to have a priest and an established parish in our own towns. He and his family spent years without any opportunity to see a priest, to go to confession, to receive Holy Communion, or to have their children baptized. The Yanneys were finally visited by the future bishop and saint, Fr. Raphael, on their remote homestead, when he baptized their children and stayed for a few days to offer church services and give the sacraments to the local Syrian Orthodox community. In the following years, they again had no access to a priest, since Fr. Raphael was based in New York and was traveling all over the U.S. to find the scattered Syrian Orthodox people. When Fr. Nicola's wife, Martha Yanney, tragically fell ill and then died in childbirth, she was not able to receive the sacraments or have an Orthodox funeral, because there was no priest. These experiences of having so little connection to the Church were formative for Fr. Nicola. 

When his community all agreed that he was the best candidate to become their priest, Fr. Nicola was ordained by the newly consecrated Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn. In accepting ordination, he assumed a life of incredible self-sacrifice. While a single father with four still-young children, at Bishop Raphael's request Fr. Nicola began serving not only his local community in Kearney, Nebraska, but the Syrian Orthodox people throughout numerous Mid-Western states. After years of pouring himself out, he literally gave his life for his flock when he contracted the Spanish flu while confessing and communing ill parishioners, during the pandemic of 1918.

With the publication of Apostle to the Plains last summer and now its availability as an audiobook, we have the huge blessing of access to an in-depth look at Fr. Nicola's life and ministry. It was a treat to listen to the audiobook, because I love being read to while I work around the house. I'm very picky about narration, and I thought the read-aloud style of this recording was well done. The reader's straightforward manner doesn't distract from the text, allowing it to take center-stage. More importantly, the reader demonstrates an obvious respect for Fr. Nicola. 

While I am glad to have the audiobook version and am already listening to it for a second time, I am planning to purchase the hard-copy version of the book, as well: I want to be able to reference it easily, and I want to see how names are spelled and have the full experience that comes with reading a book. As you can see, I highly recommend Apostle to the Plains!

You can find it here as an audiobook: Apostle to the Plains Audiobook
And here from Ancient Faith Publishing: Apostle to the Plains Hard Copy