Release Date: April 2, 2019
Pages: 332
About The Book:
Imagine an eighteen-year-old American girl who has never read a newspaper, watched television, or made a phone call. An eighteen-year-old-girl who has never danced—and this in the 1960s.
It is in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Leonard Feeney, a controversial (soon to be excommunicated) Catholic priest, has founded a religious community called the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Center’s members—many of them educated at Harvard and Radcliffe—surrender all earthly possessions and aspects of their life, including their children, to him. Patricia Chadwick was one of those children, and Little Sister is her account of growing up in the Feeney sect.
Separated from her parents and forbidden to speak to them, Patricia bristles against the community’s draconian rules, yearning for another life. When, at seventeen, she is banished from the Center, her home, she faces the world alone, without skills, family, or money but empowered with faith and a fierce determination to succeed on her own, which she does, rising eventually to the upper echelons of the world of finance and investing.
A tale of resilience and grace, Little Sister chronicles, in riveting prose, a surreal childhood and does so without rancor or self-pity.
Thoughts:
I for one felt very moved by this Little Sister A Memoir. Chadwick is so insightful when it comes to telling her life story. Everything that happens to her is very eye opening from being separated from her parents at such a young age to being forced out of the community she grew up in and was most accustom to.
Then to finding her bearings once she was forced out. Chadwick is truly remarkable. The group of people she was surrounded by were really intelligent but pretty easily manipulated by their religion and people who thought differently about their religion. All the healing that had to be done in that community and families reconnecting.
The photographs set a tone for the entire book. I very much enjoyed this memoir, I highly recommend this book.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Melissa (Lexijava) 