Requiem at the Refuge
A Sister Mary Helen Mystery
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"A San Francisco nun... author [O’Marie] evokes convent life in the 90s with simple reverence and gentle humor." - Publishers Weekly
Sister Mary Helen is dismayed when, after the unexpected death of Sister Cecilia, the president of Mount St. Francis College, Sister Patricia is appointed the post. Sister Mary Helen is not in the new president's best graces and feels she surely will be asked to retire. But the chance to volunteer at a drop-in center for abused women and serve on the board quite revives Sister Mary Helen's flagging spirits -- until a young woman who frequents the center is murdered.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eightyish Sister Mary Helen is almost resigned to retirement and is learning to knit when a young friend, Sister Anne, suggests she volunteer at the Refuge, a shelter for homeless women in San Francisco. But during her first hours there, Sister Mary Helen finds the battered corpse of a young prostitute. As in previous books in this series (Death Takes Up a Collection, Death of an Angel), O'Marie's feisty heroine proves the match for any professional detective. The author, a San Francisco nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, evokes convent life in the '90s with simple reverence and gentle humor. Who else would use such a homely aphorism as "If beggars were horses, this entire hill would be full of manure" on the same page with a passage ("O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new") from the Confessions of St. Augustine? The clients of the Refuge, mostly past-their-prime prostitutes, are portrayed with compassion, yet with no attempt to sanitize the sordid realities of their lives. On Nob Hill, meanwhile, Richard Dunn, successful lawyer and erstwhile candidate for governor, is romancing the lovely Amanda, a paralegal in his firm. His plain, plump wife, Betsy, awaits him at home, finally facing the fact that he is a philandering heel. O'Marie twines the strands of these disparate lives with humor and sympathy. Readers won't forget, in particular, the authentic prostitutes Venus, Candy, Genie, Crazy Alice, Peanuts and Miss Bobbie. Mary Helen unravels the mess with her usual insight and sturdy independence, aided, she firmly believes, by her good friend God, who loves them all.
