Requiem at the Refuge (Sister Mary Helen Series #9) » (Unabridged)

SISTER CAROL ANNE O’MARIE has been a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet for the past forty-seven years. She ministers to homeless women at a daytime drop-in center in downtown Oakland, California, which she cofounded in 1990. REQUIEM AT THE REFUGE is her eleventh novel featuring Sister Mary Helen.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

How do you make God laugh? Tell Him you've got a plan. That's what Sister Mary Helen reminds herself when she sets out to start a new life—as a volunteer in a women's homeless shelter. A savvy octogenarian with an adventurous streak, Mary Helen is no stranger to the shady side of San Francisco's hilly streets. So when a young resident at the Refuge shelter is found dead, Mary Helen makes it her business to solve the murder. Soon this lady of the Order gets herself into a holy mess involving corrupt local politicians, a prostitution ring, and a tangled web of private-eyes, police officers, and the 'refugees' themselves. Mary Helen calls upon her beloved sisters at St. Francis College for salvation, but it's going to take a lot of prayers to protect Mary Helen from the dangerous characters—and shocking confessions—that come in her wake...

"O'Marie twines the strands of these disparate lives with humor and sympathy."—Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Eightyish Sister Mary Helen is almost resigned to retirement and is learning to knit when a young friend, Sister Anne, suggests she volunteer at the Refuge, a shelter for homeless women in San Francisco. But during her first hours there, Sister Mary Helen finds the battered corpse of a young prostitute. As in previous books in this series (Death Takes Up a Collection, Death of an Angel), O'Marie's feisty heroine proves the match for any professional detective. The author, a San Francisco nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, evokes convent life in the '90s with simple reverence and gentle humor. Who else would use such a homely aphorism as "If beggars were horses, this entire hill would be full of manure" on the same page with a passage ("O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new") from the Confessions of St. Augustine? The clients of the Refuge, mostly past-their-prime prostitutes, are portrayed with compassion, yet with no attempt to sanitize the sordid realities of their lives. On Nob Hill, meanwhile, Richard Dunn, successful lawyer and erstwhile candidate for governor, is romancing the lovely Amanda, a paralegal in his firm. His plain, plump wife, Betsy, awaits him at home, finally facing the fact that he is a philandering heel. O'Marie twines the strands of these disparate lives with humor and sympathy. Readers won't forget, in particular, the authentic prostitutes Venus, Candy, Genie, Crazy Alice, Peanuts and Miss Bobbie. Mary Helen unravels the mess with her usual insight and sturdy independence, aided, she firmly believes, by her good friend God, who loves them all. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|