Famed author Robert Louis Stevenson produced this non-fictional work. He writes an open letter denouncing what he sees as an unfair treatment of Father Damien, a Catholic priest who lived and worked among the lepers in a colony on the island of Honolulu. Stevenson who knew Father Damien writes to Rev. H. B. Gage to offer a rebuttal of the charges levelled against Damien among them being "a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted."