EVERY INCH A SAINT

Clinch offers a novel that weaves multiple stories through an account of the real-life Eileen O’Connor (1892-1921), the Australian founder of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor.

In 2019, cousins Alex and Caitlin are recovering in Adelaide from a car accident when they come to possess long-lost tapes recorded by their great-great-grandmother, Kathleen O’Brien. Intrigued, the cousins decide to slowly unwind their ancestors’ stories. They hear a highly spiritual and deeply human account that begins in 1903, the year the O’Connors moved down the street from Kathleen, in Sydney, Australia. With them was their daughter, Eileen, who, at the age of 3, fell and broke her back. Her later health problems were later understood as complications of transverse myelitis, due to tuberculosis. As an adult, Eileen was less than four feet tall, unable to walk without assistance, paralyzed in her right arm, and had vision problems. Yet she refused to let her physical state keep her from her religious calling to care for poor sick people in their own homes. Kathleen narrates this transformation of her childhood friend into the matron of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor, documenting the difficulties Eileen faced as she pursued her work outside of regular ecclesiastical channels. Meanwhile, Kathleen’s secular life contrasts greatly with Eileen’s, and it forever changes after her husband, George, enlists to fight in World War I, and returns traumatized. Clinch effectively shows how the synergy of each of these women’s stories is found in the present-day narratives of Alex and Caitlin, who come to see their own trials and tribulations as the continuation of a generational cycle. Spiritual readers are likely to find great inspiration and value in this novel, which consistently illustrates Eileen’s grace and the strength of her conviction; in real life, she’s long been considered for possible sainthood. However, they may also find that the frequent shifts in perspective between Kathleen’s story and her descendants’ often break the flow of an otherwise remarkable and sometimes-transcendent narrative.

An often engaging story that shows how the past can both haunt and illuminate the present.