Stephen Harrigan first heard the story of Our Lady of Fatima when he was a young boy attending a Catholic school in Texas in the 1950s, struggling to come to grips with a religion that simultaneously soothed and terrified him. The question of what actually happened in Fatima in the early part of the 20th century, one of the most important, and most mysterious, events in the church’s history, captured his young imagination and has stayed with him ever since.
His new book "Sorrowful Mysteries" is an examination of the phenomenon of Our Lady of Fatima, an attempt to unravel and put into perspective the lives of the three children, how this life-altering event changed them and the world they knew, and how it intersected with so many of the signal moments of the 20th century — pandemics, revolutions, world wars, assassinations, and even skyjackings. It is a sweeping story, but also at its heart a very personal one, about Harrigan’s own relationship with Catholicism and his lifelong struggle to break free from a religion that in so many paradoxical ways shaped and defined him.
Stephen Harrigan is the author of the New York Times bestselling "The Gates of the Alamo," "Remember Ben Clayton" (which, among other awards, won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for best historical novel), "Challenger Park," "A Friend of Mr. Lincoln," "Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas," and "The Leopard Is Loose." He is a writer at large for Texas Monthly, as well as a screenwriter who has written many movies for television. He lives in Austin, TX.
