Jim is an Irish immigrant to Brooklyn who, one dreary February afternoon, closes the windows of his tenement and turns up the gas, setting his young pregnant wife on an unexpected course, along with the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor who come to her rescue.
I love McDermott; she is one of very few fiction writers who depict American Catholic experience without kitsch. In this case, a family saga provides the backdrop for an up-close look at the lives and work of women religious in their heyday, at the turn of the last century when in Catholic neighborhoods they were nurses, social service workers and teachers and lived in intimate connection to the families they served. McDermott is not uncritical or dewy-eyed in her portrayal, but she draws vividly the unceasing physical labor, skill and grit that characterized the work of these women. The Ninth Hour makes a lovely homage but as a piece of fiction I prefer Charming Billy and After This.
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