NovAntiqua - Heidi's Hobby

On Easter Sunday evening, my back began to twinge and by bedtime I was in significant pain. Easter Monday afternoon I'm able to walk gingerly - a swift recovery! ...but I'm forced to slow down and enjoy the 70 degree breeze and watch our glacier continue its slow melt in the middle of the cul-de-sac. It's good excuse to simply be in the beauty of the day and maybe even pick up the book I just ordered, a project of Heidi's. This led me to wonder if others might also be interested...

----

In her own wonderful way, Heidi was quite the character. I don't know if this was a habit she continued into midlife, but in young adulthood she drove around with a massive dictionary in the trunk of her car, just in case. Of? One can only imagine. I can't snicker too much considering there's no end to the roasting I receive for my devotion to my retro handset that plugs into my cell phone; an item that Kevin's brother deemed, "an invention that solves a problem that doesn't exist." 

...but I digress.

Heidi loved words. Her first favorite book was The Sesame Street Dictionary, insisting on having page after page of it read to her by our mom. I think it may have escaped her sneaky 4 yr old question, carefully phrased, that granted us our mom's permission to, "color in books." She loved telling the story that she knew this would be interpreted by our exhausted mom as "...in coloring books," as Heidi selected children's books for each of us and handed me some crayons. 

In adulthood, Heidi combined her love for words, design, and great literature found in the public domain, into a project of reformatting texts and offering them for sale, launching NovAntiqua. This hobby quickly became focused on a work that combined more loves - theology and Latin - as she tackled the massive tome of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa, producing a series of Latin/English side-by-side volumes. I recall her delight when she discovered professors were putting her volumes on their course book lists. 

Her first NovAntiqua project was a book to which I was first introduced by my own mother-in-law: Quo Vadis. Introduced to it by her father, it remains one of her favorite books; a phenomenal piece of historical fiction that tells of 1st Century Christianity in Nero's Rome. When Heidi mentioned her new hobby and the book she started with, I was over the moon ...and then never got around to ordering a copy.

During Holy Week, remembering Quo Vadis and the treasure it would be to own one of Heidi's copies of it, I placed my order. I was also eager to own it because our parish priest mentions it at least yearly and I wanted to get my hands on Heidi's edition before recommending it to my fellow parishioners as a trusted copy. (It is!) It arrived on Holy Saturday, a perfectly-timed gift from my sister who, from my current vantage point, lives perpetually in the hiddenness of that day (reference to this post).

I can't help being struck by the final words of the blurb on the back cover, which read like another thread in the consistent tapestry of Heidi's life. (Not her words.) "He tells the story of...the cost of following One who asks only everything, even life itself."

So much of this book project reflects Heidi - her love for the Church, for words, for beauty, and for great literature. I tear up every time time I recall my 40th birthday and the stack of books - Doctors of the Church - she placed in my hands, her face glowing with that eager and welcoming grin that said, "Come with me. Come deeper!" Having this book now takes me back there - different in kind, but a gift from her. 

It occurs to me that if you've been touched by Heidi's life and death, and/or enjoy historical fiction, you might also want to own a copy*. The paperback found on amazon is her edition, and it is her edition that is featured in the "look inside". (Please ignore the reviews, which include hardcover editions with which Heidi had no part and are apparently terribly formatted.) 

My copy. As soon as it arrived I double-checked that it was the NovAntiqua edition.

---

* I get nothing for this except the joy of knowing that my sister's hobby continues to bless others, and in a small way also blesses her family. The Keiser family continues to receive royalties from the sale of NovAntiqua books. Though the Summa is fairly niche, Quo Vadis is engaging and exciting historical fiction with broader appeal; an excellent Easter season read.

If the Summa is your cup of tea, please consider Heidi's editions for your personal library.