Confessions of a Reluctant Catholic

Portrait of a novelist

Alice McDermott June 17, 2004 - 4:15am

I am a Catholic by birth, third child and only daughter of two first-generation New York Irish Catholics who never paused to think twice (as they would have put it) about where or when or whether I should be baptized into the Catholic church (Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Albans, Queens, two weeks after my birth) or sent to Catholic schools (Saint Boniface School, Elmont, Long Island; Sacred Heart Academy, Hempstead), or whether Catholicism would ever become...

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About the Author

Alice McDermott is the author of six novels, including Charming Billy, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998, and After This, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.

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