Saint Training

Author: Elizabeth Fixmer
Age: 12+
Rating: 4/5

About: Mary Clare O'Brien has made a bargain with God. If he helps her mother regain her faith, her father to make more money, and her brothers not be drafted for the Vietnam war, she will become a Saint. But being good is more difficult than she thought, and she's not even sure if God has accepted her bargain. How will can she know for sure?

Thoughts: There is a lot going on in this book. It takes place in the year 1967, there are major changes happening in the Catholic church, feminism is taking off, the Vietnam war is in full swing and the black liberation movement is making headlines. On top of all this, her mother is pregnant with another child (9 kids already), her family is having trouble paying the bills and she gets her first period!

While that is quite a long list of major events to cram into 233 pages, the story doesn't seem unrealistic. Mary Clare is the eldest daughter in her family, and it is up to her to help her mother look after the younger children and help out around the house. Mary Clare also seems acutely aware of the troubles in the house and feels a sense of responsibility for helping out with those too (i.e. her mother's depression and loss of faith, and some of the family bills), all the while trying her best to be good enough to be accepted early into a convent so that she can become God's bride before she "starts liking boys too much (p.8).

Mary Clare is a headstrong girl who's efforts made me want to give her hugs and cry. She's going through so much, and everyone expects so much from her! She's doing her best, but it doesn't always turn out the way she expects. And she has LOTS of questions. Luckily she's been writing to the Mother Superior of a convent she hopes to join, and the Mother gives her some steady-ing advice. The letters between Mary Clare and the Mother were some of my favorite parts of the novel.

The story spans one year, from September to September, and Mary Clare changes a lot in that time. Something the heroine/author made a point of acknowledging, and I enjoyed reading about her certainty to confusion to learning as she grew.

Didn't Like: The story flowed oddly sometimes. Perhaps nearing her page quota, the author seems to realize she still had story elements she wanted to include and had to think of ways to cover up a lapse in time. Several months would suddenly have dissolved without me being aware.
Other times the story seemed to pick up halfway through a situation and I would be confused thinking I must of skipped a few pages. Not finding it, I would continue reading and that way find out the missing information a few pages later. This was distracting from the overall flow of the story.