The biography of Nicholas Ferrar (1593-1637) is the story of a man whose ministry to his family turned a worldly misfortune into a spiritual opportunity. When financial crises struck the family in 1624, he persuaded them to abandon London for their newly-acquired property at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, there to embrace a distinctive pattern of piety that made them an example of community to their own and future generations. Avoiding the hagiographic tone of earlier biographies, Joyce Ransome brings the man and the family alive revealing not only their strengths but also their...