Sorrowful Mysteries - by Stephen Harrigan (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In 1917, in Fâatima, Portugal, three shepherd children claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared before them and spoke the words, "Do not be afraid." Stephen Harrigan first heard the story of Our Lady of Fâatima when he was a young boy in Texas in the 1950's, struggling to come to grips with a religion, Catholicism, that captured him, thrilled him, and simultaneously terrified him, as well as with the notion of sin and of what actually happened in Fâatima in the early part of the 20th century, one of the most important mysteries in the Catholic pantheon. Sorrowful Mysteries is a detailed and extraordinary examination of the appearance of Our Lady of Fâatima, an attempt to unravel and put into perspective the lives of the three children-how it changed them and what happened to them after the life-altering event, a peering into the Catholic religion itself, and Harrigan's own personal relationship with the power of his childhood religion"--

Book Synopsis

Part memoir, part mystery: a powerful exploration of the three secrets of Fatima and a man's journey grappling with his own faith

In 1917, in Fatima, Portugal, three shepherd children claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared before them and spoke the words, "Do not be afraid."

Stephen Harrigan first heard the story of Our Lady of Fatima when he was a young boy attending a Catholic school in Texas in the 1950s, struggling to come to grips with a religion that simultaneously soothed and terrified him. The question of what actually happened in Fatima in the early part of the twentieth century, one of the most important, and most mysterious, events in the church's history, captured his young imagination and has stayed with him ever since.

Sorrowful Mysteries is a detailed and extraordinarily compassionate examination of the phenomenon of Our Lady of Fatima, an attempt to unravel and put into perspective the lives of the three children, how this life-altering event changed them and the world they knew, and how it intersected with so many of the signal moments of the twentieth century--pandemics, revolutions, world wars, assassinations, and even skyjackings. It is a sweeping story, but also at its heart a very personal one, about Harrigan's own relationship with Catholicism and his lifelong struggle to break free from a religion that in so many paradoxical ways shaped and defined him.

Review Quotes

"[A] sober and engaging history-memoir about the supposed miracles at Fatima. . . . The mystery of the Fatima Letter, also known as the Third Part of the Secret, is the anguished heart of Sorrowful Mysteries, the hinge between Harrigan's thoughtful (and appropriately skeptical) history of the alleged miracles and his own moving recollections about the terror he felt growing up in the double shadow of nuclear and theological apocalypse." --Robert P. Baird, The New York Times Book Review

"Harrigan hopes to offer a clearheaded narrative of the visions and the reverberating events that followed. At the same time, the book is a work of memory, as Harrigan recounts his childhood as a devout Catholic. Well researched and beautifully written, the book concludes with a meticulously detailed account of the author's recent trip to Fatima. Sure to fascinate both the faithful and skeptical alike." --Booklist

"Harrigan looks to the story of the Fatima apparitions as a vehicle for telling his own tale of struggling with faith and especially with his Roman Catholic upbringing. . . . Well-researched and interesting. . . . A profound exploration of faith, centered on famous apparitions." --Kirkus Reviews

"A colorful account of the 1917 appearance of the biblical Mary to three young shepherds in the village of Fátima, Portugal. . . . Harrigan uses the events of Fatima to paint a vivid portrait of Catholicism as an all-consuming faith that played on 20th-century anxieties with supernatural visions, apocalyptic imagery, and tales of eternal torment for sinners. Rendered in novelistic detail, this is a fascinating history of a mysterious event and its complicated legacy." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

STEPHEN HARRIGAN is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Gates of the Alamo, Remember Ben Clayton (which, among other awards, won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for best historical novel), Challenger Park, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, and The Leopard Is Loose. He is a writer at large for Texas Monthly, as well as a screenwriter who has written many movies for television. He lives in Austin, TX.