That's very gratifying. Twice, for example, he's received letters from Jewish women married to Catholic husbands. Agatha McGee, he admits, is based partly on his churchgoing mother. Mass. She wasn't shaking hands. I got that out of my system with her.
Fiction can work that way.
It can get rid of your ghosts. Unlike his parents, who had a simple and unwavering catechism-based faith, Hassler admits to struggling with religion from time to time. Still, he's never strayed far from the Church of his childhood. His prescription for a cure includes a fresh injection of ordained women and married men to energize today's overworked and weary priests. Yet 60 years of churchgoing have left me with this deep-seated need to be lifted up and carried along, time after time, by the familiar words and rubrics.