Sins of the Mother A Novel [Paperback]

A sweeping novel that follows a mother and daughter through post-WWII Ireland and London, demonstrating that family bonds can never be broken.Prologue

SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 1958

Sister Marie scurried along the dark corridor as fast as her pudgy little legs would carry her. Even though she would never admit it to the other nuns, alone in the cloisters at night she often got scared. This evening was worse than usual. A storm had knocked the electricity out again, and the flame from her candle cast eerie silhouettes on the stone walls, as though shadow demons lined the path on either side, lying in wait for her to pass.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” she murmured under her breath, trying to draw courage from the words. “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

As she continued to recite the psalm, Sister Marie shivered, this time from cold rather than fear. Even the heavy wool habit couldn’t keep her warm at this time of year. Just before Thanksgiving last week, the weather had finally turned. The cold, bright sun set earlier these days, and then the infamous San Francisco fog rose up from the sea, covering the thick legs of the Golden Gate Bridge before rolling in toward the shore, the white mist creeping across the city and snaking its way up here to the Sisters of Charity Orphanage on Telegraph Hill. Sometimes, lying awake in her eight-by-ten-foot cell, Sister Marie imagined the fog oozing in through the keyholes and under the doors, like something from one of those monster movies her younger brother liked to watch.

Stop that,she scolded herself. It was this overactive imagination that had led the canoness at her last convent to suggest that she might not be suited to life as a nun. But even though she had struggled through her postulancy—the six-month period to determine whether she should take the veil—Sister Marie hadn’t wanted to give upl£|