Saints for All Occasions (#672) by J. Courtney Sullivan is one of the best novels I've read in a long time. This story of a pair of Irish sisters who emigrate to Boston in the 1950s reminded me at the outset of one of my other favorite authors, Colm Toibin, but Ms. Sullivan puts her own uniquely American stamp on this tale.
Nora and Theresa Flynn come to America following Nora's fiancé. When the book opens, she is the matriarch of a family of four. She calls her younger sister, now living in a cloistered Abbey in Vermont, to inform her of a death in the family. With Theresa's decision to come to Boston to attend the funeral the unraveling of family secrets begins. Moving between past and present, each character's back story is revealed in this absorbing narrative.
It is so easy to relate to how complicated things become in any family, given circumstances that are hardly uncommon. What makes this book so special is that Ms. Sullivan got the details exactly right, from Brigham's Ice Cream to The Home for Little Wanderers to Cardinal Cushing's weekly radio rosary. When Theresa's life in the cloister is described, I felt I knew this place, I had seen these things myself. When I read Ms. Sullivan's Acknowledgements, I found I was right. But even if you didn't grow up in New England, you'll recognize the family dynamics and alternately find yourself rooting for first one, then another member of the Flynn and Rafferty tribes.
I can only hope that the rest of my summer is filled with such quality reading!
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