Call Of The Lark [Paperback]

In her powerful memoir, Call of the Lark, Maura Mulligan takes us behind the walls of a Franciscan convent in the 1960s and brings alive a nun's story that is both revealing and redemptive. But Call of the Lark is much more. It is also a chronicle of life in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 50s, a testament to the challenges of emigration to the United States, and a portrait of one woman's strength and determination to forge a fulfilling life. The author begins her story in a Peekskill novitiate, where she is a young postulant preparing for her marriage to Christ and reminiscing about her childhood on rain-swept farm in County Mayo, where women smoke clay pipes at a wake, the donkey brings turf from the bog to keep the fire burning, and children dibble the spuds, pick blackberries, and dodge cane-wielding schoolmasters. The night before she sails for America, young Maura, an accomplished step dancer, performs for the villagers who come to bid her farewell-the women all taking a turn at the butter churn as they arrive, a tradition believed to bestow good luck. In the bustling new world of New York City, Maura revels in the freedom of having a job at the New York Telephone Company and money to pursue her love of Irish dance. But even as she wins competitions, earns accolades at work, and is courted by a handsome and attentive young man, she feels the tug to do something more with her life and leaves the world behind to answer a higher call. In the convent, though she sometimes chafes at authority, the young postulant forges ahead, determined to meet the challenges, sacrifices and demands of her new life. Assigned to a boys' home, she discovers a gift for teaching and a love of children that intensifies the pain of realizing she will never have children of her own. During her years as a nun, Sister Maura experiences a series of even more painful family losses at the same time that she begins wrestling with doubts about her calling and questions about the role of women inl3,