I No Turning Back is the moving, inspiring story of

two committed nuns and their spiritual passage

from certainty and limitation toward enlighten-

ment and adult responsibility. It is the story of

two women who had the strength and courage to

risk everything they were to stand behind what

they believed.

In October of 1984, twenty-four nuns joined

with four priests and sixty-nine Catholic lay peo-

ple in signing an advertisement in The New York

Times,. it protested attacks by conservative Cath-

olic bishops on vice-presidential candidate

Geraldine Ferraro's pro-choice position on abor-

tion. The Vatican's reaction was swift: retract or

face dismissal from religious orders. After two

years of intense pressure from Rome, only two

nuns held out--Barbara Ferraro and Patricia

Hussey. This is their story.

Between them, Ferraro and Hussey had spent

forty-seven years as nuns. Ferraro entered the

convent before Vatican II opened the cloistered

world of silence, shaved heads, and self-flagella-

tion. By the time Hussey entered, nuns were

being urged to participate in education and social

change. For both, commitment to a religious

community was not a retreat from but a way into

the world. However, their path inexorably

diverged from the church's approved one. Their

defiance turned on the issue of abortion but

encompassed larger issues of women's place in

the Catholic church.

Here are two women whose lives dramatize

some of the great moral and spiritual questions of

our era. What future is there for women in the

Catholic church? Will women be able to claim

their own lives, control their own reproduction?

How can the church play a meaningful role in

modern American life? Is it possible to be what

one believes?

No Turning Back is a profoundly moving pro-

file in courage, brilliantly told by two heroic,

sympathetic, and intensely contemporary

women.