A Novel
Ex-Marine and unmarried mother Macrina McGrath leads her Church out of the Middle Ages and becomes the first woman pope.
Macrina McGrath, a young 23-year-old Catholic ex-Marine and unwed mother, begins to see cracks in the Church she grew up loving. Bad priests preying on children, harsh treatment of the divorced and LGBTQ, a deep-seated and toxic sexism, and archaic dogmas force her to choose between leaving the Church or trying to make it better. Pursuing graduate school in theology at Georgetown and a trip to India help form her resolve: She will stop at nothing to take the Church out of the Middle Ages and deliver women from their abject status. Macrina McGrath joins and soon after heads the excommunicated Womanpriest movement and, with the help of the Archbishop of Boston, begins an ascent she never imagined. But her love for Ezra, a Jewish physicist and colleague at Amherst where they teach, is getting in the way.