Saint Kateri Tekakwitha:
The Girl Who Walked Two Hundred Miles
Paddy Bréagnamh
Mini Saints & Missionaries Library
ISBN 9798899681325
ASIN B0GZF22TDB
ASIN B0GZD3B915
There are currently 12 volumes available in this series dedicated to specific saints and 3 the focus on 52 female saints, and one is a compilation of boy saints. I have enjoyed them a lot and keep checking for when new ones are released. I have benefited from reading them all and recommended each of them to several people. I especially loved the volume on Pope Leo XIV. This volume I picked up shortly after it released and read it the few weeks later. It was one of 4 new titles that released in 2026.
The description of the book is:
“Saint Kateri Tekakwitha: The Lily of the Mohawks tells the remarkable true story of a young Native American woman whose quiet courage changed lives across centuries.
Born around 1656 in a Mohawk village in present-day New York, Kateri Tekakwitha grew up in a world shaped by tradition, community, and change. After losing her parents to a smallpox epidemic, she was raised by relatives who expected her to follow the ways of her people.
But Kateri chose a different path.
Drawn to the Christian faith she encountered through Jesuit missionaries—and inspired by the quiet example of her mother—she made a decision that would set her apart from everyone around her.
She faced pressure, ridicule, and even threats.
She did not give up.
Instead, she left her village and traveled more than 200 miles through the wilderness to a Christian community, where she lived a life of prayer, service, and remarkable spiritual strength.
Inside this book:
• A true, historically grounded biography of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
• Life in a Mohawk (Haudenosaunee) village in early America
• The complex history of missionaries and Indigenous communities
• Her baptism, persecution, and courageous decision to leave home
• Her journey to Kahnawake and life of faith and service
• Reflection questions that build character, courage, and empathy
Perfect for:
• Ages 8–12 (independent readers)
• Catholic families and homeschoolers
• Religious education classrooms (CCD, Sunday school)
• Readers interested in Native American history and Christian biography
• Parents seeking faith-based stories about identity, belonging, and courage
Part of the Mini Saints & Missionaries Library, this book introduces young readers to the lives of saints who chose truth, faith, and courage, even when it set them apart. Explore the series by clicking on “Mini Saints & Missionaries Library” above.”
About the series we are informed:
“Mini Saints & Missionaries is a growing library of kid-friendly biographies that bring the lives of saints, blesseds, and heroic missionaries to life for young readers. Each book blends clear storytelling, engaging visuals, and thoughtful reflection questions to help children ages 7–12 learn from real examples of courage, kindness, and faith.
Our mission is simple: to introduce the next generation to remarkable holy men and women in a way that is accessible, inspiring, and rooted in authentic Catholic tradition.”
I now suspect that the author, Paddy Bréagnamh, is a pen name, but have yet to confirm that. I can only find these volumes in this series and the previous one on Saint Patrick in several bookstores online. This is the twelfth volume I have read in the series, I read it shortly after it was released, it was one of four released in the middle of 2026.
The chapters and sections in the volume are:
Introduction
1. Born Between Two Worlds
2. The Sickness That Changed Everything
3. The Black Robes Come
4. A Faith That Couldn’t Be Hidden
5. Baptized
6. The Long Walk North
7. The Lily Of The Mohawks
8. The Miracle Of The Scars
9. Be Brave Like Kateri
Reflection Questions
Timeline Of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
Glossary
Activity: A Letter to Someone Who Feels Left Out
Author’s Note
Mini Saints & Missionaries Library Series
The dedication in this volume states:
“For every young person who has ever felt like an outsider in their own home, and kept the faith anyway.”
This volume is written for young readers, it would be considered an early chapter book. Each chapter has illustrations. The material is well put together. It is a good introduction to this lesser known saint. I highlighted a few passages while reading this volume they are:
“This is the story of a girl who found something true in the middle of loss and loneliness, held on to it with both hands, and became the first Native American saint.”
“Her father was Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief. Her mother was a woman named Kahenta, an Algonquin Christian who had been taken captive by the Mohawks years before and had made a life among them. Kahenta had been baptized before her capture and carried her faith quietly, the way a person carries a small flame in a cupped hand, protecting it from the wind.”
“And she could not have known that what her mother had quietly planted in her heart would one day grow into something that outlasted everything the world could throw at it.”
“Her uncle, a chief named Iowerano, took her in. He was a serious man, respected in the village, proud of Mohawk tradition, and deeply suspicious of Christianity, which he associated with the French missionaries who kept appearing at the edges of Mohawk territory with their black robes and their strange talk of dying and rising.”
“The Jesuits were French priests who had been working among the Indigenous peoples of the northeast for decades. The Mohawk called them the Black Robes, for the long dark cassocks they wore. Some Mohawk people welcomed them. Others were deeply wary. Kateri’s uncle Iowerano was among the wary.”
“What her story does is something different. It shows a young woman who encountered a faith, turned it over in her hands, examined it carefully, and decided on her own terms that it was true.”
“When she was about eighteen, a Jesuit priest named Father Jacques de Lamberville came to Ossernenon and began ministering to the small number of Christians in the area. Kateri sought him out. She told him about her mother, about the seeds of faith that had been planted in her childhood and had never died. She asked to be received into the Church.”
“She took the name Kateri, the Mohawk form of Catherine, after Saint Catherine of Siena, a young woman of fierce faith who had also faced a world that preferred her to be quiet.”
“In 1679, she made a private vow of chastity, dedicating her life entirely to God. In both the Christian tradition she had chosen and in the Mohawk world she came from, a woman who refused marriage was making a radical statement. No one in her community fully understood it. But no one tried to stop her.”
“The Jesuit priests at Kahnawake who knew her best wrote about her with something close to astonishment in their letters home to France. One called her the most fervent Christian he had ever known. Another wrote that her example changed the lives of everyone around her simply by proximity.”
“Word spread through Kahnawake and beyond. People came to pray at her grave. Some reported being healed. The Jesuit missionaries began collecting testimonies. The people who had known her called her Kateri, the Lily of the Mohawks, a name that carried both her gentleness and her strength.”
“Her bravery was the hardest kind: the kind that happens at home, in the household, around the people who know you best and expect the most from you. The bravery of continuing to pray when someone you love is watching you and disapproving. The bravery of walking away from something safe and familiar because you know, clearly and quietly, that you have to.”
“What strikes me most about Kateri is the particular shape of her courage. It is so quiet. She did not raise a banner or lead a charge. She simply refused to be less than what she was. She kept praying when people mocked her for it. She kept walking when her body said to stop. She kept walking toward a love she was certain was real, even when everything in her immediate world told her to stop being so serious about it.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this volume. I am well beyond the recommended age for this book and series, being in my mid-50’s; but I still greatly enjoyed the book and the series. In fact the youngest two of my four children are 15 and 18, and they have both read books in this series and enjoyed them as well. This book and series are great reads for the young and the young at heart! I would love to see how the author would handle Pier Giorgio Frassati, Charles de Foucauld, John Henry Newman, and many of my other favourite saints. But these books are so go no matter who is profiled next I know I will pick it up. My only concern is the subtitle ‘The Girl Who Walked Two Hundred Miles’ I know it is often said, but having grown up in the area she traversed, and have portaged and canoed a lot in the region, realistically she only walked 20-40 miles the rest was by canoe. But still an exceptional book.
This latest release in this series is another awesome read. The series keeps getting better and better. It was an excellent little read in a great series. Pick it up or one of the others and give it a try!
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2026 Catholic Reading Plan!
Books in the Mini Saints & Missionaries Library Series:
…
Lives of Women Saints: 52 True Stories of Courage, Faith, and Character
The Lives of Women Saints Coloring & Activity Book
The Lives of Women Saints Workbook
Mini Saints & Missionaries Seven Saints for Boys A First Communion Collection of Courage and Faith
...
