Chasing Grace: A Novel of Odd Redemption

by Carol Costello

Cathy Callahan runs away at age ten to escape her mother’s abuse and find God, whom she first met in a Chicago public park when she was six. The next thirty years are a series of funny, brutal, and uplifting adventures that pit her humor and strength against the rage and confusion that make her reckless, desperate, and blind to gray areas.

Cathy searches for love, healing, and wholeness in all the wrong places from Chicago’s North Side to Montana, to Reno, to San Francisco. In the Catholic Church’s byzantine system of salvation and ruler-wielding nuns. In a bakery/brothel run by Mollie, the brassy older woman who “adopts” her. With a good-looking, half-naked guru hawking “I AM Oneness.” With Spirit in the High Rockies and marriage to a sexy, dangerous cowboy. In too much Scotch. She finally stops running and retraces her steps to Chicago, where she faces her demons and finds unexpected grace in the last place she thinks to look.

Chasing Grace is a raw, humorous look at spiritual coming of age, at unconventional ways to heal deep emotional wounds, and at finding greater purpose in surprising places despite desperate odds.

Nook

First published August 31, 2011

Reviews

[C.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This funny, breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking story follows young Cathy Callahan out of her mother's abusive clutches into an unusual quest for sanctuary. For anyone whose childhood involved nuns, "Chasing Grace" is a must-read!--guaranteed to surprise you. I didn't really expect to like it, since I've had very little contact with Chicago, Catholicism, or the other spiritual havens Cathy tries out, but her distinctive personality and determination won me over quickly, and I couldn't wait to see what adventure she'd fall into next. This book is full of insight and humanity, hilarious moments, and suspense, too!