Review: Pro-life or No Life?
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 27, 2013
Sixteen is a tough age. Steve Thorpe was Ellen's geeky boyfriend. When confronted by a possible pregnancy his eyes reflected fear.Emerson Ward has a triple dilemma. Ellen, a teen aged pregnant girl turns up dead and her angry father wants to kill him. Inward anger turns outward. Nell, Emerson's number one item for a year reveals she is expecting their baby. Swamped by confounding emotions after Nell refuses his marriage offer, Emerson tries to bow out momentarily by assuming an alternate identity. He spends a passionate night with Audra snuggled up to her red hair. This brings more conflicting confusion and he needs several days to test intricate theories before they crumble. Dark lethargy fingers lure a guilt depression to test his determination.Emerson Ward becomes Norm Wilson with intentions of changing his identity. He takes a solitary undercover job as a handyman at the Merciful Sisters of Nonnatus, a convent in Wisconsin. Mysteries multiply.Ward had met Mary Quinlan,  a nun involved in the Catholic Women's Freedom Movement at the woman's clinic in Ashland. They were pushing for change within the church to give women more authority, become more involved, and have more freedom.Nell had decided to have their baby. Emerson's thoughts vacillated between wild enthusiasm and desperate fear.  A sense of resolve settled in. He knew that emergency birth control could have ramifications of financial, emotional, and physical, potentially tragic after effects.Now, as Norm Wilson, he learned that the nuns admitted more than three hundred pregnant girls per year, yet, only a handful were recorded as giving live birth. Most were recorded as having still births, or, miscarriages. Where were the babies?This is a well written, fast paced thriller and thoroughly believable. Late night sinister visitors indicate deviousness. Mercenary deeds,in both past and present, under the guise of benevolence, are shams covered with layers of mire.