Abbey Girls

By Mary Behan and Valerie Behan

Between the ages of 11 and 17, Mary and Valerie Behan attended a boarding school for Catholic girls in Ireland called Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham. Founded in 1841, "The Abbey" served as the Mother House of the Loreto order of nuns who established convents throughout the world to provide education to thousands of young girls. Now in their 60s, Mary and Valerie began a correspondence about their years at the Abbey. Although they shared many of the same experiences, to their astonishment and delight they found that their memories of boarding school were substantially different. Their school days are recounted in a series of letters that describe a unique, cloistered world governed by religion and tradition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Behan
• Release date: Dec 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310660368

Mary Behan

Mary Behan is a retired professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She devotes her time to writing fiction, memoir and short stories. Her first book, Abbey Girls, is a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland. She lives with her husband in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin in a historic log cabin overlooking a tallgrass prairie.