Review by Booklist Review
On May 13, 1917, in Fátima, Portugal, three shepherd children--10-year-old Lucia Santos and her younger cousins, Jacinto and Francisco Marto--had a vision of the Virgin Mary, seeing her and talking with her. The sighting repeated monthly, five more times, through that October 13. Word quickly spread about the miraculous appearances, and soon thousands of pilgrims showed up each month. The children became famous and were endlessly questioned about their experiences, until the two Marto children died within the next three years of influenza during the epidemic. Lucia went on to become a Carmelite and lived to be 97. Harrigan hopes to offer a clearheaded narrative of the visions and the reverberating events that followed. At the same time, the book is a work of memory, as Harrigan recounts his childhood as a devout Catholic. Well researched and beautifully written, the book concludes with a meticulously detailed account of the author's recent trip to Fátima. Sure to fascinate both the faithful and skeptical alike.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Harrigan (The Leopard Is Loose) provides a colorful account of the 1917 appearance of the biblical Mary to three young shepherds in the village of Fátima, Portugal. The visions--in which a beautiful, shimmering woman informed the children that WWI would soon be ending, and divulged three secrets that weren't disclosed until later--took place against the backdrop of a country unsettled by the shockwaves of WWI (nearly 100,000 Portuguese men had been sent to fight in Africa or on the Western front). Harrigan traces how the prophecies inspired believers crushed by poverty and political upheaval, while sparking fear in the country's anticlerical government, which believed the visions stemmed from attempts to revive Catholic sentiment among the public. In the decades afterward, Harrigan writes, the visions seeped into the Catholic imagination, ramping up apocalyptic anxieties as believers awaited the 2000 release of a letter in which one of the shepherd children disclosed Mary's final revelation about the "fate of the world." Harrigan uses the events of Fatima to paint a vivid portrait of Catholicism as an all-consuming faith that played on 20th-century anxieties with supernatural visions, apocalyptic imagery, and tales of eternal torment for sinners. Rendered in novelistic detail, this is a fascinating history of a mysterious event and its complicated legacy. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Losing his religion. Novelist and nonfiction author Harrigan looks to the story of the Fatima apparitions as a vehicle for telling his own tale of struggling with faith and especially with his Roman Catholic upbringing. The historical aspect of this work are the appearances that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have made to three children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The children's experiences became, and remain, a global sensation in Catholicism, punctuated by three secrets entrusted to Lucia, the oldest child--and the only one to survive into adulthood. The story of Fatima provides a portion of the backdrop of Harrigan's Catholic upbringing in 1950s and 1960s Texas. The author shares difficult memories of his youth, plagued by Cold War--tinted fears of hell and unwarranted feelings of guilt and shame. Harrigan's experiences with Catholicism led to his early adulthood exit from faith, and he forthrightly notes that he does not believe in the Fatima apparitions as supernatural events. Nevertheless, he empathizes with the three children and understands their overriding desire to experience such a supernatural moment. Growing up in a mystical faith tradition that emphasized Mary as a prime heavenly connection with each believer, Harrigan fully understands how "their childish imaginations had…been inflamed…by their belief that the Virgin Mary had visited them." The Fatima aspect of this work is well-researched and interesting, culminating in a visit by the author to various sites in Portugal connected to the visions and to the children. This book will mainly resonate with former Catholics and critics of Catholicism who, like Harrigan, are still actively searching for closure in spiritual terms. A profound exploration of faith, centered on famous apparitions. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
