The Search for Maggie Ward
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Search for Maggie Ward is a poignant tale of love, loss, and faith set in the aftermath of World War I, from acclaimed New York Times bestsellling author and theologian Andrew M. Greeley.
Young Navy flier Jerry Keenan is supposed to be on his way home to Chicago, law school, and a postwar life that is socially acceptable to a well-off Irish Catholic family. Instead he is in Arizona delaying that homecoming while he wrestles with his memories of combat and the men he saw die.
That may be one reason an encounter with a girl at a Tucson lunch counter seems so appealing. Another reason is that she is mysterious, hauntingly beautiful, and very sexy—the perfect antidote for a troubled heart.
But just when Jerry realizes how much he needs Maggie Ward, she dramatically vanishes, or is taken, from him. And Jerry Keenan, in search of his destiny and his soul, must be willing to move heaven and earth to find the woman he loves.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If none of Greeley's 10 successful novels have been turned into a movie, it's surely through no lack of zeal on the author's part. His full-length fictions are closer to screenplays than they are to novels, replete with cardboard characters, cliched dialogue and narrative structures so obvious they scream, ``Film me!'' Greeley's latest is no exception. Jerry Keenan, an Irish-Catholic Chicagoan tortured by memories of his recent WW II Navy experiences, picks up a mysterious woman (her real name, which he does not immediately learn, is Maggie Ward) who promptly initiates him into the joys of sex while trying to convince him to rekindle his lost faith in God. After many scenes of lovemaking and debate, the woman disappears during a Twilight Zone -style mystical experience in the haunted hills of Arizona, and Keenan begins an obsessive search to find her and discover her real identity (which the average reader will surmise by the end of Chapter One). Roman Catholic priest Greeley's basic message--a plea for an increased tolerance of the role sexuality plays in human relationships--is admirable, but it is undercut by his florid descriptions of sexual encounters and his stilted, scholarly efforts to depict late-'40s life: ``The coal strike of 1946 revealed the dark, peevish underside of what my generation now calls the postwar world . ''
