Bad Girl Magdalene

Kneeling to receive Holy Communion at St Saviour's Church in Dublin one Sunday, it suddenly dawns on Magda Finnan how she can earn God's blessing. She vows to kill Father Doran.A cleaner at the St Cosmo Care Home for the Elderly, the nineteen-year old remains haunted by her upbringing in a Magdalene orphanage. Among her memories of discipline, prescription and the ever-present fear of damnation, one image in particular defies the passage of time: her best friend, Lucy, falling down the deep stairwell to her death.Struggling to reconcile the Order's all-pervading principles with the reality of 20th Century Dublin, she encounters a world that is also labouring under traditional religious strictures and an ingrained sense of English oppression, and the illiterate Magda finds herself dreaming of a better life she can barely imagine.However, as the ghosts of the past refuse to lie quiet, a very different revelation awaits her. Ultimately, she will have to realise that everything she most believes in might not be God's truth after all, and that she will need more than faith in herself to survive.