Sorrowful Mysteries

“[A] sober and engaging history-memoir about the supposed miracles at Fatima. . . . The mystery of the Fatima Letter, also known as the Third Part of the Secret, is the anguished heart of Sorrowful Mysteries, the hinge between Harrigan’s thoughtful (and appropriately skeptical) history of the alleged miracles and his own moving recollections about the terror he felt growing up in the double shadow of nuclear and theological apocalypse.” —Robert P. Baird, The New York Times Book Review

“What [the Fatima letter] sets off in Harrigan is nothing less than memorable and astonishing, a tour d’horizon not just of the Fatima spectacle and subsequent events in the last hundred years but of his own life. . . . We all know the cliché that life is about the journey and not the destination, but what Harrigan proves beautifully in Sorrowful Mysteries, as he stood near the slope where the three shepherd children once prayed, is that the destination matters. This book is its own wonder.” —Jim Kelly, Air Mail

“Sorrowful Mysteries [has] an unexpectedly universal appeal: Readers simultaneously experience the wonder of childhood and the high price of unfettered belief.” —Lise Olsen, Texas Observer

“Harrigan hopes to offer a clearheaded narrative of the visions and the reverberating events that followed. At the same time, the book is a work of memory, as Harrigan recounts his childhood as a devout Catholic. Well researched and beautifully written, the book concludes with a meticulously detailed account of the author’s recent trip to Fatima. Sure to fascinate both the faithful and skeptical alike.” —Booklist

“Harrigan looks to the story of the Fatima apparitions as a vehicle for telling his own tale of struggling with faith and especially with his Roman Catholic upbringing. . . . Well-researched and interesting. . . . A profound exploration of faith, centered on famous apparitions.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A colorful account of the 1917 appearance of the biblical Mary to three young shepherds in the village of Fátima, Portugal. . . . Harrigan uses the events of Fatima to paint a vivid portrait of Catholicism as an all-consuming faith that played on 20th-century anxieties with supernatural visions, apocalyptic imagery, and tales of eternal torment for sinners. Rendered in novelistic detail, this is a fascinating history of a mysterious event and its complicated legacy.” —Publishers Weekly