In the late 1850s, the attention of the Catholic and Protestant religious communities around the world focused on a few small settlements of French-Canadian immigrants in north-central Illinois. Soon after arriving in their new home, a large number of these immigrants, led by Father Charles Chiniquy, converted to Protestantism.Caroline B. Bretell explores how Father Chiniquy took on both the sacred and secular authority of the Catholic Church to engineer the religious schism and how the legacy of this rift affected the lives of the immigrants.