Kavanagh

Kavanagh,
novel by Longfellow, published in 1849.

A young Roman Catholic, Kavanagh, is converted to Protestantism and becomes the popular pastor of a New England village church. Alice Archer is enamored of his brilliance, but he marries her less timid friend Cecilia Vaughan, and after they leave for Italy, Alice languishes and dies. Meanwhile, the young schoolmaster Churchill, seemingly adjusted to the humdrum village life, broods in his search for the sublime subject suited to a romance he longs to write.