Looking for Mary (Or, the Blessed Mother and Me)

When Beverly Donofrio enters her fortieth year, she begins a love affair with the Virgin Mary. Suffering over a grown son she's neglected and unsure of where her life is really headed, she feels she's entered her own version of Dante's dark wood. So she begins to meditate - and to collect Virgin Marys at yard sales. Beverly is hardly a devout Catholic: she starts out thinking of her Mary collection as nothing more than kitsch. But by effectively making a shrine of her home, she has invited the Virgin Mary in. Following the idea that if she could just act as if she believed, then belief might follow, Beverly the "lapsed Catholic" begins reciting Hail Marys, reading the Bible, and traveling to Mary sightings around the United States. And she embarks on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Medjugorje - with forty-nine rabid Catholics in tow. There, she prays more rosaries in one week than she had in her entire childhood. She also learns that Mary comes into your life only when pride steps out of it, and receives a bonus: hope.