More fiction than fact
I was very disappointed in The Passionate Troubadour, but maybe because I was looking for a biography rather than a novel. There is definitely more fiction than fact in this book. Francis of Assisi had such a rich, colorful life with so many incidents that have been recorded in history, and each of these could have been explored with insight and love. But it seems to me that Hays wanted to write a novel and so tried to come up with many new ideas, incidents, and suppositions. My concern is that people will read this and think that this is the true story about St. Francis. It is not, sadly. Rather, it is a fictional tale about a great saint.