J. Courtney Sullivan

"A ... novel about two sisters--one the matriarch of a boisterous Irish Catholic family, the other a cloistered nun, hidden from the world--and the secret that drove them apart"--

Saints for All Occasions

Renee Blankenship

One of the things I loved best about J. Courtney Sullivan's Saints for All Occasions was how quietly and unassuming this story snuck up on me. I found myself about halfway through, reading along and realizing that I didn't want to put it down. I was thinking about Nora and Theresa in the car on the way to the grocery store and contemplating what it means to raise a family and have your children grow up and into themselves while I was stirring the spaghetti sauce on the stove. 

"Taken together, the small choices anyone made added up to a life."

This quote, for me, is meaningful personally and alongside this beautifully written story. As Nora looked back over her life, as Theresa looked to the past wondering what she might have done differently....it was the realization that those small decisions along the way are what created the lives they led. And the lives of their children. 

I enjoyed the sections that took place in Nora and Theresa's past immensely! One of my favorite things about a well written family saga is seeing the sequence of events, those "small choices", build upon themselves. Some parts of the story seemed familiar to me from other books. The Irish American experience, the dance halls, the girls making their way across the Atlantic. The stifled fifties housewife who is questioning her marriage and husband. But altogether, in this book, Sullivan writes a unique story all her own. 

My favorite character was Nora, who wasn't able to see or understand the affect of her choices on herself until much later but still handled herself with grace. Her constant role as the family matriarch, her protective mothering and her avoidance of things she didn't understand was incredibly endearing. As a mother myself I often wondered what I'm going to do with my grown adult children, when they start making their own decisions and have their own opinions different from mine. Their own life experiences. I can't imagine being able to understand everything they choose, but hope for the grace to handle them well. 

 I would suggest this book to anyone who is loves a good family saga, one filled with secrets and regret and the love of family that perseveres throughout mistakes and misfortune. I enjoyed the historical aspects of the sections that took place in Nora and Theresa's past as well as the present day themes that were more relatable.

Joanna O'Donovan

Amelia C 

Melissa Railey

Carolyn Yoo

Puneeth Uttla

Olivia Holmes

Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand. Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children: John, a successful, if opportunistic, political consultant; Bridget, privately preparing to have a baby with her girlfriend; Brian, at loose ends after a failed baseball career; and Patrick, Nora's favorite, the beautiful boy who gives her no end of heartache. Estranged from her sister and cut off from the world, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago. A supremely moving novel, Saints for All Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together.

Saints for All Occasions

Reviews