Outrage: Sister Molly Cleary vs. the Catholic Church

Michael debuts with an energetic tale of a nun’s rise in the 1960s women’s movement. Raised in a Catholic family in an impoverished area of Chicago, Molly Cleary joins the sisterhood in the 1950s. Sometime after Vatican II in the 1960s, she dedicates herself to working in women’s shelters, having survived sexual abuse from her father and her twin brother, Thomas. She quickly locks horns with Thomas, a priest, when he counsels a parishioner to return to her abusive husband, who goes on to kill the woman. Molly then helps a Black woman gain custody of her children from her abusive partner. Meanwhile, Molly begins to develop romantic feelings for a community leader, which causes her anguish, since she took a vow of chastity. Her struggles with her faith eventually lead her to chair a national secular women’s organization. The dialogue is often didactic (“Nowhere is it written that a penis is required for saying Mass and offering the sacraments,” Molly says at one point), but readers will cheer on the novel’s boisterous and likable protagonist in her earnest fight for social justice. It’s a rousing story of resilience and advocacy. (Self-published)