Both in the first wave of press in 2002 about abuse in the Catholic Church and now during this second wave, we’ve talked very little about girls, and even less about stalking and the other kinds of abuse that people in power, in particular religious authorities, enact on the unsuspecting and the young. While we have a lot of journalists covering the scandal and talking to victims, we have very little in the way of “personal narrative” of what this experience is like. I hope my novel, This Gorgeous Game, and its protagonist’s first-person voice will offer a new perspective on the conversation.
Donna Freitas
Donna Freitas is newly a member of the faculty at Hofstra University in New York. She writes nonfiction, most recently, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America?s College Campuses (Oxford, 2008), and fiction, The Possibilities of Sainthood (2008), This Gorgeous Game (May, 2010), and forthcoming in 2011, The Survival Kit, all with Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (FSG). Donna has reviewed books for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and has been a reviewer for both fiction and nonfiction at Publishers Weekly since the fall of 2003. She lives in Brooklyn.
