Catherine Johns

A priest unable to contain his desires; a schoolgirl starved for affection and hoping to escape from a violent, alcoholic father - this is the story of MAGGIE, based on an incredible true story. Dreaming of breaking free from her troubled family, Maggie becomes entangled instead in a taboo relationship - first at school in the Hunter Valley, then at university in Sydney - with the older Father Nihill. As a result, Maggie's hopes of freedom and success seem thwarted. Yet exile and banishment lead her in unexpected directions. Balancing deceptively spare prose and descriptions of 1960s Australian life that are by turns starkly confronting and exquisitely beautiful, MAGGIE is the story of a complex, forbidden relationship and a woman who both loses and finds herself anew.

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