Exsules Filii Evae
(The Banished Sons of Eve)
Stephen Hoffman's first installment in the Three Rivers Trilogy, exploring the lives of two interrelated people:
Eileen O'Rourke is a sometime nun who left home in ninth grade for the convent. Now she's about to turn 39, and the depressed mother she fled by entering religious life has finally died. Eileen has come back to her Wisconsin hometown on the Mississippi River to put her mother's house on the market, but also to ask herself some difficult questions about what actually sustained her vocation up until now.
She finds a friend in Adrian Underwood, a 24-year-old local seminarian who's wondering what it means, exactly, to be gay and Catholic, and wrestling with the complex notion of what it is to be called to the priesthood. Other than perpetuating a struggle with authority, does he have any reason to be in the seminary?
For each, the other's friendship comes to play an unexpected role in the search for peace of mind and a measure of happiness.
Exsules Filii Evae (The Banished Sons of Eve) sounds the inner lives of a seminarian and a nun in the 1980s, capturing a time when there was hope among left-leaning Catholics that the center might hold--before papal quashing of the women's ordination movement, the reprimand of liberal theologians, and tides of sexual scandal in the church that led to finger-pointing at gays made that possibility seem ever-more-remote under John Paul II and the man who would be his eventual successor, Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI). It's a thoughtful person's novel about experiences in a religious tradition--the untold story of what happens when doubt begins to occur in the lives of people who have committed themselves over a lifetime to an institution that will inevitably fall short of their hopes.
Loss comes in many shades, some of them complicated and unacknowledged, and Adrian and Eileen's intertwined story is one of two individuals who pick themselves up and find renewed hope in not-the-most-likely places.
She finds a friend in Adrian Underwood, a 24-year-old local seminarian who's wondering what it means, exactly, to be gay and Catholic, and wrestling with the complex notion of what it is to be called to the priesthood. Other than perpetuating a struggle with authority, does he have any reason to be in the seminary?
For each, the other's friendship comes to play an unexpected role in the search for peace of mind and a measure of happiness.
Exsules Filii Evae (The Banished Sons of Eve) sounds the inner lives of a seminarian and a nun in the 1980s, capturing a time when there was hope among left-leaning Catholics that the center might hold--before papal quashing of the women's ordination movement, the reprimand of liberal theologians, and tides of sexual scandal in the church that led to finger-pointing at gays made that possibility seem ever-more-remote under John Paul II and the man who would be his eventual successor, Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI). It's a thoughtful person's novel about experiences in a religious tradition--the untold story of what happens when doubt begins to occur in the lives of people who have committed themselves over a lifetime to an institution that will inevitably fall short of their hopes.
Loss comes in many shades, some of them complicated and unacknowledged, and Adrian and Eileen's intertwined story is one of two individuals who pick themselves up and find renewed hope in not-the-most-likely places.
.png)
"At so many points in this book, I found myself thinking 'Yes! That's exactly it!' about everything from antique shop rituals to the dead on details and nuances of the Catholic Church, its major debates, and the difference between faith and religion. The characters are vivid, family dynamics are complex, the book flows, and things were wrapped up in a satisfying way at the end. I hope there are more books forthcomingfrom this author." --Truly Julie, Amazon reader"The very nature of a novel makes it a work of fiction; however the references to...church pronouncements are not fictitious. They, and their consequences, are as real today as they were in the 1980s --the time frame for this story. Readers will find refreshing portraits of many characters. Hoffman's skill at narrative is both entertaining and heart wrenching. One of the greatest achievements of a writer is to create characters that readers can feel for and with. The reader will empathize deeply for Adrian, and Eileen (the nun), as they move through their pain and make new choices in their lives. More, the reader will be cheering them as they decide. It is not necessary for one to be a Catholic, or ex-Catholic, or even a Christian to find this novel uplifting. Anyone who has found themselves suppressed by political, corporate or religious institutions, and knew they had to rise up somehow beyond the constraints of mediocrity, will identify with Adrian and Eileen." Ray Repp composer, "Mass for Young Americans" recurrent winner, ASCAP's Award for Special Contributions to the Field of Music