Act of Contrition

Download or read book Act of Contrition written by Janice Holt Giles and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Janice Holt Giles, nationally acclaimed author of twenty-four books, considered Act of Contrition to be one of her best novels. Yet Giles's publisher twice rejected the manuscript, fearing its iconoclastic and controversial content to be too direct a challenge to the rules of church and society. Giles's daughter saved the manuscript for nearly fifty years until finally this "lost novel" was published. The story focuses on the intimate and difficult relationship between Regina Browning, a librarian newly relocated to Kentucky, and Michael Panelli, a Catholic doctor whose wife left him for another man. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Michael is not free to divorce his wife and marry Regina, yet neither can deny the intense emotional and physical attraction they feel for one another. Set against the backdrop of the 1950s, a time before the sexual revolution, before women's liberation, and before Vatican II, Regina and Michael must tackle the strict decorum of society in order to unapologetically and guiltlessly experience the healing, unifying, and sacred grace of their love.