Saints for All Occasions
J. Courtney Sullivan
2017, 352 pages
Fiction
Sisters Nora and Theresa Flynn are nothing alike. Nora is reserved, shy and responsible. Theresa is exuberant, mischievous and always ready for a good time. But the distance between their personalities does not impact their closeness as sisters and friends. So when Theresa becomes pregnant out of wedlock after they’ve resettled in Dorchester, Mass., from Ireland in the late 1950s, Nora handles the situation the only way she knows how – by taking care of her sister, and her child – or at least that’s what she believes she’s doing.
Fifty years later, Nora is living in Hull, Mass., where she and her husband relocated their large family, and Theresa is a cloistered nun in a Vermont abbey. The sisters are estranged, but when Nora loses her oldest child, she knows that she has no choice but to reach out to Theresa. As J. Courtney Sullivan writes from the perspective of Nora, Theresa and Nora’s children, the tightly wound secrets of a traditional, Irish Catholic family unravel and the reader experiences a sad, but beautiful story of the volatile bond of two sisters that spans a lifetime.
Nicole SchulzeConcord Public Library
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