Ernest Everhard, a young Revolutionary Socialist, fights against the powerful state organization known as The Iron Heel, whose goal is to crush the working class at any cost, so that he and his wife can live freely.

Hilaire Belloc's best work - according to the author, as well as most critics - The Path to Rome is less concerned with Rome itself than with a pilgrim's journey to the Eternal City. A spirited Catholic apologist, Belloc traveled on foot from Toul (near Nancy), France, and crossed the Alps and the Apennines in order to, in his words, "see all Europe which the Christian Faith has saved." Afterward, he turned his pen from his usual polemics to literature,...