Leap of Faith (review)

After Abby Lorenzo is thrown out of public school for stabbing a classmate in the arm, her only choices are "alternative" school, home school, or a church-affiliated school, so St. Catherine's is her last chance for a semi-normal sixth-grade education. She flourishes academically in her new roost, makes a couple of friends, and discovers she has some dramatic talent, but success at school doesn't begin to address the resentment she feels toward her neglectful, workaholic parents, whose unwillingness to believe she was being sexually harassed by the principal's son had led directly to the knifing and her subsequent expulsion. The best way Abby can devise to get her religiously ambivalent parents' attention—and a bit of revenge into the bargain—is to convert to Catholicism, so she makes as much fuss as possible over attending Sunday Mass and taking evening classes to prepare for Baptism. The single drawback to the plan is her utter lack of belief in Catholic creed, but as she gropes her way awkwardly toward forgiveness, faith, it seems, seeks her out. It's refreshing to find a fictional Catholic school that isn't a den of repression, neuroses, or molestation, and to witness a portrayal of an adolescent stumbling her way realistically toward a spiritual awakening. Add Bradley's generous helpings of humor and deft pacing that reels out the backstory of Abby's former school torments, and you have a fast-moving novel with special appeal for readers of Christian tradition who would very much like to believe in "Jesus' promise that life wasn't going to suck forever."