Book Review: Saint Training by Elizabeth Fixmer

This book follows the journey of 11-year-old Mary Clare O’Brian as she strives to become a nun, and ultimately a saint. She tries to stop talking back to the nuns at her school, fighting with her eight brothers and sisters, and secretly liking boys in her head. She thinks that if she stops sinning, God will help her family, who is struggling to make ends meet after they find out another baby is on the way. Mary Clare just wants to see her family happy again but unfortunately that means her mother going back to school and taking a job as a teacher. It is unheard of for women to work outside the home in their 1960s small town community, Mrs. O’Brien’s feminist view makes her neighbors turn up their noses. More responsibility falls on Mary Clare, who must constantly take care of the house and her siblings, which makes her an outcast with her friends. Meanwhile, the government is drafting young men to serve in Vietnam, and Mary Clare’s two older brothers take different sides.