The real Léonie Martin 

After reading all the online sources about Léonie, many people ask where they can learn still more about the real-life Léonie Martin.  An excellent source is the book Leonie Martin: A Difficult Life, by Marie Baudoin-Croix.  Although it is unfortunately out of print, used copies are available online. 

 

 

One of the very best sources, the letters of Léonie's mother and father, Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin, has just become available in English; for information and to order, see A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, 1863-1885.  These letters contain many stories about Léonie and create a vivid picture of her childhood and the family in which she grew up.  Many who have ordered the book have deluged us with enthusiastic letters and phone calls, and I recommend it highly. 

Another excellent in-print source of information about Léonie is one of the most often overlooked sources of knowledge about the Martin family: the two volumes of the Letters of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux published by ICS Publications.  These two volumes contain not only Thérèse's letters but many letters she received and many letters her family exchanged among themselves.  Thérèse's letters to Léonie are a powerful synthesis of her "way of confidence and love."  The letters from Léonie which have survived, and the exhaustive notes in these two volumes, tell us much about Léonie's life and circumstances until Thérèse's death, at which time Léonie was thirty-four years old.  It is necessary to dig into the two volumes to find these treasures, but it's well worth the effort.