Virgin time

"Virgin Time is a book that goes to the heart of one of the most profound yet least discussed issues of contemporary American life: the individual's search for faith. It is "a passionate inquiry," as Patricia Hampl puts it, "into the sources of wonder that cause a person to say, 'I believe.'"" "Hampl's book begins as a grudging quest - not to find something, but to shake the indelible brand of a Catholic upbringing. In her search, she travels to the "old world" of Catholicism, in Italy and France, and inevitably her pilgrimage is peopled with other pilgrims - crotchety English agnostics,…