Since losing his mother at age six and moving with his distant father to Jupiter, Fla., to care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother, 15-year-old Dylan constantly feels the past weighing on him and a directionless future looming ahead. Everything changes when an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary appears in the trunk of a tree at the third-rate golf course where he caddies, and amid the media frenzy he meets three other wayward teens, forced to follow their Virgin Mary Groupie mothers around the country. Their leader, Angela, inducts Dylan into their Virgin Club, which requires members to want something and to take a risk. It quickly becomes clear in Dylan’s didactic yet heartfelt narration that what he wants is Angela, despite her growing manipulativeness. As he takes risks, making new friends, reconnecting with his father, believing his grandmother’s wild stories and finding his first love, the once-lonely teen also learns to live in the present. Readers will forgive the tidy ending to experience Dylan’s awakening to life’s mysteries and recovery of faith. (Fiction. YA)
