Customer Reviews

The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a very good, and interesting narrative of one nun's experiences fleeing from the Communists. Sr. Cecilia is a nun living in Slovakia during the 1950's. It begins by telling of her early childhood experiences and her happy life in the convent. Then the communists came and Sr. Cecilia began helping refugees across the border into Austria which was free of the Communists. She is found out and flees from the communists throughout the country until she finally makes it over the border to Austria. IT is a very touching and true account of what happened, the people she hides with, the people who betray her. The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars was because of the writing. All the editor did was to take down exactly what Sr. Cecilia (who did not speak English fluently) said; literally. So it is written in the manner of a person who does not speak the native tongue. For example sometimes, adjectives or adverbs are missing, the sentences are in the wrong tense and are written very simply. But on the whole this was a very touching true story.

The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia is a vivid, exciting, occasionally comical true story of a rural Slovakian girl who grows up in a big family and is nurtured by an idyllic traditional Catholic culture, her misadventures with family and friends, her schooling by nuns and eventual entry into the convent, her career teaching children whom she loves, the gradual despoliation of her country and suppression of Catholic culture by Coummunism in the 1950s, her courageous resistance to Communism, her cooperation with other heroic resisters, and her narrow escape from imprisonment and death when she finally has no choice but to flee her country. Wonderful both for adults and for reading to children.