Saints for All Occasions : A novel.
(Audiobook CD)

Compact discs.

The New York Times best-selling author of Maine returns with a sweeping novel about two sisters--one the matriarch of a boisterous Irish Catholic family, the other a cloistered nun, hidden from the world--and the secret that drove them apart. It has been thirty years since Mother Cecilia Meade spoke to her sister, Nora. But when she receives the news that Nora's son Patrick has died, she knows she must make the journey home to face her family at last. Nora's children arrive for their brother's wake, each wrestling with a private struggle. Bridget and her girlfriend, Natalie, have decided to have a baby--a choice likely to surprise Nora, who still refers to Natalie as "Bridget's roommate." Brian has to figure out how to be an adult after a seven-year career in minor-league baseball comes to an end. And John, a showy and successful political consultant, must decide what to do with lifelong grudges held against a brother who is suddenly gone. As the family tries to make sense of Patrick's passing, Mother Cecilia arrives in their midst, her very presence exposing a long-buried history to Nora's children who never even knew she had a sister. Moving from a small village on the coast of Ireland to the working-class streets of Boston and a tranquil abbey tucked away in the Vermont woods, Saints for all Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together.From the Hardcover edition.