I ask myself why I wrote this novel. In part it was the pleasure of creating a story and imagining characters coming alive. And the characters do take on a life of their own, both in my head and, I hope, on the page. But I was also struck by the stunning revelations about the abuse of children by religious professionals. It is arguably the greatest crisis in Catholicism in a very long time. I grew up in this tradition and spent two decades in the...