Just Say No to Abuse Declaring War on Terrorism. I read Eco's Rose, and saw the movie, but haven't seen either Mandino or Thomas. I suspect the Magdalene book will be about hailing another Mary, not the Mother, the Wife.
Fiction often wraps itself in truth as a way to get a story out.
We still like to burn people at the stake of public opinion, and calling something a fiction gets us off. It gets me off anyway. There's a guy in Cape Breton who fought at Louisbourg in 1758, then in the French-Indian wars and was granted land for his services. In 1846 the church sent an investigator to find out if he was still alive because the Hessian regiment to which he belonged was still sending veteran checks. Indeed he was alive then, and perhaps is still alive today.