Changing Habits
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They were sisters once.Almost forty years ago, in a more innocent time, two girls enter the convent. Angelina and Joanna come from vastly different backgrounds, but they have one thing in common — a desire to serve, to join in the community of sisters.Despite the relative seclusion of the convent house in Minneapolis, they're not immune to what's happening in the world around them. In 1972 Angie's involvement with a pregnant teenager triggers a crisis of faith. At the same time, Joanna's relationship with a Vietnam veteran brings her face-to-face with the choices she made — and didn't make — in her own life.Then, Angie and Joanna leave the sisterhood, abandoning the convent for the exciting and confusing world outside. The world of choices to be made, of risks to be taken. Of men and romantic love. The world of ordinary women ...Debbie Macomber illuminates women's lives with compassion, with love and with grace. In Changing Habits she proves once again why she's one of the world's most popular writers of fiction for — and about — women.Performed by Trini AlvaradoPublishers WeeklyMacomber (Between Friends; Navy Wife) covers familiar emotional ground in an unusual setting, giving readers a glimpse of life in a Minneapolis convent. In the early 1960s, three young women find themselves taking vows: Angelina Marcello, answering what she believes to be God's call; Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, who is following the urging of her devout parents; and Joanna Baird, who is fleeing heartbreak (her fianc arrived home from a tour in Vietnam with a pregnant Vietnamese bride a month before their planned wedding). They initially find fulfillment in service-Joanna as a nurse, Angelina as a home economics teacher, Kathleen as an elementary school teacher-but as the years pass, each confronts a crisis of faith that she cannot resolve within the convent walls. In the early 1970s, they return to secular life to face a society that has changed dramatically in the previous decade, particularly in relations between men and women. The premise is inventive, but the challenges the sisters face-a young student's back-alley abortion, an alcoholic priest, encounters with violent and lascivious men-are predictable, and Macomber gives them stock treatment. The development of the women's friendship occurs off the page, so that it seems jarring when they reminisce like soul mates at a reunion years later, with families in tow. Macomber's historical research about the Second Vatican Council and church politics is seamlessly woven into the story and adds badly needed depth to the novel. Author tour. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
