Delightful Mary McGreevy is a redheaded force to be reckoned with, but no one seems able to figure her out. After 16 years in a convent, Mary comes home to Creevagh, County Mayo in 1950 for her father’s funeral and decides to revoke her vows as a nun to become an independent farmer.
As if that weren't scandal enough for a traditional little village, she then chooses to have a child on her own and infuriates her neighbors by refusing to name the father. Every man in the village is suspect. The results are disastrous, and the lives of several men are upended by the power of town gossips who are willing to put careers and reputations at risk for their own amusement, which they cloak in the piety they feel they surely posses, but in truth are totally bereft of its influence; which Miss Mcgreevy is only to happy to point out. At times her debates with a Priest are a riot, as her knowledge of Aristotle, Sarte, and a variety of male Old Testament figures, "who begat children", outside of matrimony makes for brilliant dialogue.
The whole town is turned inside out when Mary's logical choice is revealed at last, yet there is still another unexpected surprise laying in wait at the end of this most unusual novel. ( )