Soul-Searching: A Novel Approach
Who are we and what do we value? How are we shaped by family, faith, cultural traditions, history and current events? These are among the questions characters grapple with in our three novels. Our first meeting will include an introduction to our authors and the texts and a discussion of two short stories which are available online. Our first novel will let us follow Philippa Talbot into a cloistered Benedictine convent at a time when religious life is beginning to change because of Vatican II; we will next join Father Declan in Ireland where he struggles with his conscience after a parishioner reveals a long-held secret; finally, we will visit a Minneapolis bookstore where Tookie is haunted by the ghost of a recently deceased customer as well as the history of our country’s indigenous people the experience of COVID and the murder of George Floyd. Fittingly, the novel begins on All Souls Day in 2019 and ends on All Souls Day, 2020.
Course texts, in order of reading, include: short stories “Desired Things” by Alice McDermott and “The Empty Family” by Colm Toibin; In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden, The All of It by Jeanette Haien and The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.
Instructor: Sr. Fran McManus
Thursdays, June 27 – August 8 (No Class July 4)
12:30 – 1:30 PM
on Zoom.
Fee $60.00