Nun

Like many Catholic girls prior to Vatican II, Mary wanted to be a nun. Ecstatic at her acceptance into a teaching order, she began the period of intense training called "formation," learning the virtues prescribed by a 19th-century, male-dominated Church: humility, self-abnegation, and childlike dependence on the will of her superiors. What happens to a normal 14-year-old girl, giggly and interested in boys, who adores her family yet feels compelled to commit herself to a life that will demand that she never again visit her parents' home? And what leads Mary, "formed" and on mission, to make…