CALL OF THE LARK

Sometimes just the bare bones of a story sounds intriguing... this seems like such a story... take a snapshot of life in rural Ireland, a Franciscan nun and a yearning to find a life that makes a difference ... and you have

CALL OF THE LARK, A Memoir by Maura Mulligan

IN HER POWERFUL NEW MEMOIR, CALL OF THE LARK, MAURA MULLIGAN takes us behind the walls of a Franciscan convent in the 1960s and brings alive a nun's story that is both revealing and redemptive. But Call of the Lark is much more. It is also a chronicle of life in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 50s, a testament to the challenges of emigration to the United States, and a portrait of one woman's strength and determination to forge a fulfilling life.

The author begins her story in a novitiate in Peekskill, New York, where she is a young postulant preparing for her marriage to Christ and reminiscing about her childhood on a rain-swept farm in County Mayo, where women smoke clay pipes at a wake, the donkey brings turf from the bog to keep the fire burning, and children dibble the spuds, pick blackberries, and dodge cane-wielding schoolmasters.

The night before she sails for America, young Maura, an accomplished step dancer, performs for the villagers who come to bid her farewell-the women all taking a turn at the butter churn as they arrive, a tradition believed to bestow good fortune.

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