Kevin Killeen's debut novel, winner of a Silver Benjamin Franklin award from the Independent Book Publishers Association, is written with a keen sense of comic timing, and is a sweet, laugh-out-loud look at the innocence of childhood in the leafy Webster Groves suburbs of 1960s Saint Louis. From falling for a girl with no-good-for-sports stick arms and beautiful penmanship to jumping freight trains, smoking cigarettes, robbing the local Ben Franklin--and, in his spare time, trying to get to heaven--Patrick Cantwell is learning all about life at Mary Queen of Our Hearts parochial school. By the time Patrick graduates second grade he's practically a grown-up, complete with a broken heart, a police record, and memories of the Beatles at Busch Stadium.
Eight long years of grade school and nuns is about to end in freedom. Graduation! But only if Mimi Maloney and her classmates Patrick and Tony can outsmart investigators who suspect, and rightly so, they're guilty of the worst crime ever in parish history. Mimi Maloney, an average student who never gets in trouble, shows her genius in love and crime in this tale of Catholic school kids enduring the last two weeks of eighth grade. Police and church investigators conspire to learn who put the stolen snow globe paperweight in the hand of Mary on the church roof, and suspicion falls on Mimi's classmates, Patrick Cantwell and his best friend Tony. A comic panorama of parish life in the 1970s, when lying to get out of trouble was considered a sacred art form, because, after all, wasn't President Nixon lying too? In this suspenseful, laugh-filled sequel to Never Hug a Nun and Try to Kiss a Girl, award-winning author Kevin Killeen gives us a caper plot of flawed heroes and lovable villains that packs the comic blast of that old hand grenade dad brought home from the war and that illustrates childish daydreams all too often have adult, real-life consequences.
The Chelsea Lately writer and star and stand-up comic delves into her life as a mom-of-three and wife of a house-husband who's "infuriatingly bad at collecting neighborhood gossip""--Dust jacket flap.
THIS is the story of a rare human being, a dynamo of a woman who devoted her life, joyfully, humorously, expertly, uniquely, to others. Orphaned at 3, brought up by the Sisters of Charity in Nevada, a nun herself at 20, Sister Stanislaus, after several months of nurses’ training in Baltimore, was sent to work in New Orleans. She never really left. Her first, last, and only assignment was Charity Hospital, New Orleans. In time, the two became virtually synonymous. She spent over fifty years there. When she arrived, Charity Hospital comprised one antiquated building; modern medicine was in its swaddling clothes; nursing was an even more hit-or-miss affair. When she left, Charity Hospital was one of the finest in the land and nursing had become a highly professional career. Sister Stanislaus played a large part in the development of both. She brought to nursing a great and joyful zeal, an originality, and a love which affected everyone she came in contact with. Constantly perfecting herself as a nurse, she became one of the best known nursing-sisters in the country. But she did not stop there. Changing, innovating, wheedling money from a string of politicos—from Huey Long and his predecessors by Earl Long—she built Charity Hospital into the great modern institution it is. Yet her fame and her influence were not a result of her public achievement; they were based upon something more immediate, more spiritual. They grew from her all-embracing charity, her lifetime of devotion to the sick and the troubled. She was beloved as a person; the rest, an incredible array of activities and duties, accomplishment and concern, simply happened. Or so she pretended. An extraordinary personality merges from this brisk, expertly written biography, a lively and highly original nun, nurse, and human being, full of surprises but indefatigably on the job, bringing relief and consolation to thousands who passed in and out of a great hospital.
In 1998, at the very moment that a publisher had approached Bruce Davidson about a book of his 1959 Brooklyn Gang photographs, former gang leader Bobby Powers unexpectedly telephoned the Davidsons. Over the next decade, Emily Davidson maintained an ongoing conversation with Powers in order to bring to light his struggle to overcome his drug-ridden and violent past and to inspire others with his example. Through the words and reflections of the former drug addict and petty criminal, this book relates the long, agonizing journey from youthful urban violence and despair to the life of a committed and generous professional. Beginning in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood in the mid 1950s where alcohol abuse and poverty were rampant, Bobby Powers went from being an illiterate gang leader and notorious drug dealer to a destroyed individual who had lost everything, including family members, close friends, and himself, all presented in his own words and in grim detail in this book. At a critical turning point in his life, recognizing the threat of his behaviors to survival, he entered detox and embarked on the arduous path to recovery and self-understanding. This process involved not only acknowledging and coming to terms with the injuries he had inflicted on his children and others, but also asking for their forgiveness. Having achieved a new way of life as a responsible and caring adult, Bobby Powers is today, at 69, a nationally respected drug addiction counselor who has aided a wide spectrum of people, including former gang members. His story represents a brutal and inspiring lesson in human frailty, degradation, and transformation.
A druid-turned-nun writes of faith, love, loss, and religion in this “beautifully written and thought-provoking book” set at the dawn of Ireland’s Christian era (Library Journal) Cloistered in a stone cell at the monastery of Saint Brigit, a sixth-century Irish nun secretly records the memories of her Pagan youth, interrupting her assigned task of transcribing Augustine and Patrick. She revisits her past, piece by piece—her fiercely independent mother, whose skill with healing plants and inner strength she inherited; her druid teacher, the brusque and magnetic Giannon, who introduced her to the mysteries of the written language. But disturbing events at the cloister keep intervening. As the monastery is rent by vague and fantastic accusations, Gwynneve's words become the one force that can save her from annihilation. “As a slant of sunlight illuminates jewels long buried, Kate Horsley's novel brings words to an ancient silence and a living, vivid presence to people who lived in that time of great changes and estrangements we call the Dark Ages.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
A place of no mercy, no coddling, and no emotion, the streets of New York don’t waiver in their inability to care for anyone. In order to survive, you have to take the lessons that are given to you by them and use them to your advantage. After being orphaned not once, but twice, raised by nuns, foster parents, and passed between the homes of his grandmother and father, Jim Fiume learned how to survive and thrive after being tossed aside. His experiences led him to where he is now and helped give him wisdom that can only be gained from the university of the streets. Based on the life of Jim Fiume, the experiences from his childhood, adolescence, and a once-in-a-lifetime road trip down Route 66 are recounted in order to teach the one kind of lesson that can never be learned in a classroom… how to be street smart.
In 1947, author Beth Warren, entered the convent because she believed God called her to a special life of service for His people. She had a passionate love for nuns who combined their religious lives with outgoing compassion for others. Warren wanted to be just like them. She dreamed that answering her Call to religious life would help make the world a better place. During the sixties, Pope John XXIII asked nuns to look outside their convent walls to see where they were most needed. Warren was drawn to working with disadvantaged people, but she was told she was a teacher, not a social worker. She realized that to serve God’s deprived people and live among them, she would need to leave her religious Community. In Another Nun’s Story, Warren chronicles her joys and difficulties during her religious life from the 1940s to the 1980s. She discusses how being a rebel nun led her to break her vows and left her with unraveled feelings and some guilt. But she came to understand she was saying goodbye to an impossible dream so she could pursue one that was possible for her.
At seventeen, Mary Johnson saw a photo of Mother Teresa on the cover of TIME magazine, and experienced her calling. Eighteen months later she entered a convent in the South Bronx, to begin her religious training. Not without difficulty, this boisterous, independent-minded teenager eventually adapted to the sisters' austere life of poverty and devotion, but beneath the white-and-blue sari an ordinary woman faced the struggles we all share, with the desires of love and connection, meaning and identity. During her years as a Missionary of Charity, Mary Johnson rose quickly through the ranks and came to work alongside Mother Teresa. Mary grapped with her faith, her desires for intimacy, the politics of the order and her complicated relationship with Mother Teresa. Finally, she made the hard, life-changing decision to leave the order to find her own path, and eventually to leave the Church altogether. The story of this compellingly honest woman will speak to anyone who has ever grappled with the mysteries and wonders of life and faith.
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
