The Faith of a Catholic Novelist

My mother said, “Why didn’t they tell us these things in school?” I had just come into her room. “Like what?” I said. My mother is in an assisted-living facility run by our church. “Well,” she said. “Did you know that after the Blessed Mother gave birth to Jesus, she went into the desert, to a place God had prepared for her? She was there for twelve hundred and sixty days. It’s in the Bible. Did you ever learn that in school?”

An original short story by the National Book Award-winning author of 'Charming Billy' (1998), the Pulitzer Prize finalists 'At Weddings and Wakes' (1992) and 'After This' (2006), and several other books.