Looking for Mary
Beverly Donofrio
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2001 Compass Books
ISBN: 0140196277

Or, the Blessed Mother and Me.

As she enters her forties, Beverly Donofrio, a lapsed Catholic, finds herself collecting Virgin Mary memorabilia at yard sales. What she thinks as her search for mere kitsch, soon becomes a spiritual quest, leading her to make a pilgrimage to the holy village of Medjugorje, in Bosnia, where Mother Mary has been appearing regularly. There, she makes her first Confession in 35 years & learns that Mary comes into your life only when you let go of pride. There too, she is gifted with a bonus: hope.

Looking for Mary, which first took shape as a series on National Public Radio, is much more than that: it's about a mother in need of a mother. About a girl, still in high school, who gets pregnant, marries the father, & gives birth to their son, Jason. It's about a crazy marriage between two too young & unformed people caught up in the rock'n'roll of the times, & its inevitable divorce. It is also about her determination to become a writer, earn a living to support herself & her son, & to find love among the men she meets.

Looking for Mary is also about how a girl, on the verge of womanhood, loses her innocence & trust in the religion in which she was raised, & takes on the angst of the Feminist Era.

This is profoundly moving & infuriating memoir of a Baby Boomer who rejects the faith of her childhood for all the right reasons: birth control, a woman's right to choose (abortion), & the hoary patriarchal hierarchy of an organized religion vs organic faith.

Here is a woman, determined no man will ever control her again as she thought her husband had, dumping the ones who offer stability & affection for those who offer drama & danger, from whom she must escape, with son in tow. Painting a traumatic portrait of the frantic dark side of single motherhood.

Looking for Mary is also a fascinating religious history course on the influence Mother Mary has had around the world & down the ages, in the form of sightings, miracles, paintings, pilgrimages & celebrations. As well as Her place within her male-dominated Church.

Beverly Donofrio had always wanted to be a writer, & she lived the cliche writer's life: sex, booze, drugs, parties & abdication of parental responsibility -- which, in a man who has fathered children, is not condemned: in a woman who is a writer & a mother, it is abhorred. She is, of course, filled with skepticism, prejudices & self-loathing. True to her Baby Boomer politics, she has always insisted that she & her son be “best friends”. That Jason survived the dangers of his mother's writing life, that he grew into who he was is no surprise. How many of our children have wanted to be everything we are not?

Toward the end, during a session with a therapist, Beverly & her estranged grown-up son squabble, after which the therapist comments that all Jason wants is for her to be a Mother. This is, of course, a revelation for this writer & Baby Boomer! It was something I'd been noticing throughout: that this parent was not growing up at the same rate as her offspring.

Beverly Donofrio's story can be transmogrified to any child whose body outgrew their character, who rejected their culture's religion & sought solace in another, only to find all paths to faith follow the same route home -- to one's own relationship to Spirit.

Looking for Mary is, ultimately, a memoir of a woman who finally grows up: finds herself, seeks forgiveness from & for those she has hurt (especially herself!), & replaces a life of depression, rejection & substance abuse with a day-by-day pilgrimage to serenity, compassion & joy. In the process she figures out what sorrow means, & comes to terms with her male-dominated faith.

I listened to the Recorded Books version read by Christina Moore, & was impressed by Beverly Donofrio's insights about the influence of the Mother Mary both in her church & in the cultures she visits, especially the Guadalupe celebrations in Mexico.

Looking for Mary is a memorable, amusing, heartbreaking, absorbing scrapbook from Beverly Donofrio's quest for meaning in her life: as a parent, a writer & a daughter of Mother Mary.

More from Beverly Donofrio: Riding in Cars With Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good & the movie
(07/31/05)

Rebecca