His survivor's memoir, written originally in French, published simultaneously in English translation, and entitled Le doigt de Dieu est là!

[8][9][10] From October 1864 to March 1868 Pernin was pastor at St. John the Baptist, L'Erable, Iroquois County, Illinois, 15 miles from Chiniquy's church in St.

[11] Pernin left Illinois for the new diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, established in 1868, in the period of Duggan's mental decline that led to his removal from office in April 1869.

[12][13][14] Pernin spent his last 31 years in Minnesota in the dioceses of St. Paul and Winona (now Winona-Rochester): Church of the Crucifixion, La Crescent, 1878 to 1886; St. Patrick's, Brownsville, 1886 to 1894; St. Bridget's, Simpson 1894 to 1897; and St. Joseph's, Rushford 1897 to 1898.

[21][22] As a fundraiser to support the rebuilding of his parish facilities, particularly his church in Marinette, which he was renaming Our Lady of Lourdes, he conceived the idea of writing about his experiences of surviving the fire.

ou Episode émouvant d'un événement étrange raconté par un témoin oculaire and simultaneously by Montreal publisher John Lovell as The Finger of God Is There!

[24] When Pernin returned to Marinette in October 1874 from his trip to Montreal to publish his book, he found that he was in trouble with diocesan authorities for having spent too long a time away and had been disciplined with suspension from ministry.

A French-speaking Belgian immigrant to the Door Peninsula named Adele Brise experienced an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1859 near her family's farm in Robinsonville.

Pernin interpreted the fact that the Shrine should have burned, but did not, as an intervention of the finger of God and as a vindication of Brise's claim that the Virgin Mary had appeared there.

[40] The Wisconsin Historical Society's first reprinting in 1918 omitted passages "dealing largely with matters of Catholic faith" and pertaining "to the religious reflections and ideas of the author.

[42] Writers on wildland fires and forest ecology continue to mention Pernin, who provides evidence for deforestation, urbanization, and the conditions for wildfire in nineteenth century America.

The professional firefighter admired how Pernin, as an amateur without knowing it, followed Standard Fire Order #6: "Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively."