It isn't a novel, but The Calling really does begin on "a dark and stormy night," a true and terrifying one. Rosary Heights, the Seattle motherhouse of the Sisters of Saint Dominic, takes in a breathtaking view of Puget Sound from its hilltop perch.
Or rather, it did, until a catastrophic mudslide shifted the ground beneath the grand old home and threatened to hurtle it into the waters below. Forced to abandon their beloved motherhouse--their vegetable garden, simple possessions and priceless archives--the sisters must also rethink the future of their community.
Author Catherine Whitney was taught by these sisters, and once entertained ideas of taking vows herself. Now a married mother and journalist, Whitney returns to what's left of Rosary Heights, to tell the sisters' story, and her own. Not a best-selling author for nothing, Whitney sees Rosary Heights--literally teetering on the brink of destruction--as a metaphor for religious life in the Church and the world today.
Born into a large post-war Catholic family, Whitney entered Holy Angels Academy on the cusp of Vatican II. Her lucid, detailed descriptions of that era's upheavals should evoke sympathetic nods from anyone who survived them:
"...our congregation became a guinea pig for a series of experimental liturgies. Within the span of five years, it almost seemed as if the three priests at Blessed Sacrament had been exposed to something more powerful than their Communion wine--moondust, perhaps. One was transformed into a "charismatic" and started speaking in tongues; another had a nervous breakdown and landed in an institution; and a third priest ran off and married a pretty young college girl."
If Whitney shared with many cradle Catholics a childhood dream of becoming a nun, she also isn't alone in her "grown-up" decision to leave the Church behind. In The Calling, Whitney returns to her Catholic roots and sees the nuns who taught her in a new light.
Whitney still feels strangely drawn to the sisters and their "mysterious," radically different life. Throughout the book, she tackles (not always successfully) plenty of big, deep questions about vocation and faith and women and choices.
She's at her best when telling the stories of individual sisters: their callings, struggles, joys, and quite often, their decisions to leave the order. These former sisters recall feeling like they were living in another century, both within the convent and without. One newly laicised woman goes to movies daily, thinking of them as a "crash course" on "the real world." All are woefully unprepared for their new lives:
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