The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread

YA-- Claire Delaney's development from a serious student at a Catholic girls' high school to an earnest novice and then a questioning sister who eventually leaves her semi-cloistered teaching Order parallels changes in the Catholic church before and after Vatican II. Her story may seem like historical fiction to today's teens, but they will relate to Claire's searching intelligence and her commitment to her calling as a teacher and as a nun. They will also enjoy the many personalities, both friends and foes, behind the convent walls. --Alice Conlon, University of Houston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In 11 linked stories that trace the life of a young nun from her initiation to convent life through her eventual withdrawal, her intimate experience is voiced in lyrical and elegiac tones. We follow idealistic, insightful Claire Delaney as she is drawn to the spirituality of consecrated virginity. Within the convent community she finds ordered beauty and fulfillment, as well as all-too-human pettiness and stultifying routines that defy sublimation. For over a decade she experiences precious epiphanies as a teacher, as an accomplished musician, and as a voyager in spiritual depths. The winds of Vatican II blowing through the institutional Church in the '60s provoke troubling questions as they prepare the way for Claire to test her faith outside the convent. These beautifully nuanced stories take the reader into the microcosm of a religious community, as it once was, and make its attraction credible. Copeland (a pseudonym), who lives in Canada, is a former member of a religous teaching order.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These stories comprise a straightforward, thoughtful, and often graceful narrative about an intelligent and idealistic young woman's life in a convent just prior to Vatican II. Eloquent on the joys of singing liturgical music and chanting Psalms in a life of "enlightened worship and service," they also elucidate the pain of monastic formation. As the novice notes wearily: "Nothing was simple about navigating the waters of community life." The internal monologues that reveal why the woman eventually leaves the order are often not as effective as the portraits of other nuns such as Gertrude, who at 75 refuses "to be written off as a character." "At Peace" and the moving "Jubilee" are small masterpieces of storytelling. Essential for libraries with collections of religious fiction, this work will also appeal to general readers.
- Kathleen Norris, Lemmon P.L., S.D.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.