Denied college, Beverly Donofrio lost interest in everything but riding around town in cars, drinking and smoking, and rebelling against authority. She got married and divorced and finally ended up in an elite New England university, books in one arm, child in the other. A book about the compromise between being your own person and fitting into society.

At once a conversion story told by an immediately recognizable girl-like-you-and-me narrator, an irreverent look at the "cult of Mary", and a genuinely moving memoir, "Looking for Mary" is the story of one woman's stumble from darkness into the light.

A narrative composed of brutal honesty, tenderness, and an aching love for God. I could not put it down. Sue Monk Kidd, author of "The Secret Life of Bees"

In the middle of her life, acclaimed memoirist Beverly Donofrio thought she d found a safe haven in a beautiful town in Mexico until she was awakened in her bed by a rapist. As she writes in this fierce, unflinching account: This was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to have escaped: I had hot flashes and liver spots and was in the final stretch.

Here Donofrio wrestles with anger toward her attacker and toward life, yet...