My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir
Author, journalist, and former speechwriter to George W. Bush, Campbell offers a touching memoir on family, loss, and career as filtered through the lives and writings of six women saints: Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Faustina of Poland, Edith Stein of Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Mary of Nazareth. Campbell writes about her college years, drifting in chaos; meeting her future husband; the illness and death of her father; and the long quest to attain motherhood. During this very personal journey, she also enrolls in a feminist-thought class, which leaves her cold, while her superficial friendships and relationships lead to a “nagging discontent.” Revisiting her Catholic upbringing, she turns to the saints for guidance and to help her reconcile a desire for a career with a yearning for marriage. Thoughtful and gracious, Campbell’s story will serve as an inspiration for many young women who are attempting to straddle two very different worlds—the sacred and the profane—in a society with little patience for subtlety or complexity. --June Sawyers