Chasing Grace, Martha Manning (Harper San Francisco, 1996)***

Martha Manning is probably best known for her earlier book, Undercurrents, a highly praised account of her fight against depression. A lighter read, Chasing Grace is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes serious story of her growing up in an Irish-American Catholic family in contemporary New York. Although it's an autobiography, of sorts, it reads much more like a novel. The chapters are organized loosely around the various Catholic sacraments, such as Baptism, Communion and Confirmation.

You don't need to be Irish or Catholic or a woman to appreciate this book, but if you have children or come from a larger family it's especially enjoyable, because much of the book is how the children in this large family interact. Part of the book's appeal is that it takes you from her early childhood through her teens, then young womanhood, and finally wife and mother, and then partly through her own daughter's life from infant to young woman. The lessons Martha Manning learned while growing up are mostly universal, but growing up Catholic puts a different twist on things which can be fascinating to the non-Catholic and all-too-familiar to the Catholic reader.

The last chapter is a gem.