Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods

Resurrecting Grace features such notable authors as Louise DeSalvo, Frank McCourt, Michael Patrick MacDonald, and Anna Quindlen offering personal recollections about growing up in the One True Church. From the humorous to the painful, the stories in this collection capture the essence of a Catholic upbringing. These authors take us back to their childhoods, reflecting on the gift of faith, the power of ritual, sin and salvation, and the concept of redeeming grace. Featuring a wide range of voices and experiences, this collection is for anyone who has been touched by this complex community of faith.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807012416
• ISBN13: 9780807012413
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

wonderful book!

This is a collection of subtle stories of childhood in which Catholicism is an influence but not always necessarily the dominant one. Sewell has struck a nice balance between established, famous authors and a handful of emerging ones--whose work is among the best in the book. Recommended whether you remember your Catholic childhood fondly or not.

Not just for Catholics anymore

Anyone who has ever sinned or wondered about the nature of religious feeling should read this book. It is funny and heartbreaking by turns, and amid all these memories we see how children interpret ideas of spirituality passed down to them. They may not always understand, but their experiences are illuminating.

author/editor review

"A collection for Catholics, former Catholics, and Catholics by association, "Resurrecting Grace" is redolent with the images, sounds, smells, and deep heart experiences that are so much a part of a Catholic upbringing . . . . It is an encounter with this complex community of faith that sustains and exasperates those who have been touched by it." (from the jacket cover) These personal recollections are from some of our finest contemporary writers: Frank McCourt, Tobias Wolff, Anna Quindlen, Michael Patrick Macdonald, Brian Doyle, Sandra Cisneros, Rosemary Bray, and Patricia Hampl, among others. The collection contains pieces from writers of various races and ethnicities, and the reader is led to see the One True Church in all its colors and forms, all of its follies, and all of its profundities. The volume is rich with humor, but takes no cheap shots. These writers have reflected deeply upon their early religious experience: they have written to learn what they did not know, and they have grown deeper roots in the process.