About this item
They promised her heaven, but there was no savior.Imagine an eighteen-year-old American girl who has never read a newspaper, watched television, or made a phone call. An eighteen-year-old-girl who has never danced - and this in the 1960s. It is in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Leonard Feeney, a controversial (soon to be excommunicated) Catholic priest, has founded a religious community called the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Center's members - many of them educated at Harvard and Radcliffe - surrender all earthly possessions and aspects of their life, including their children, to him. Patricia Chadwick was one of those children, and Little Sister is her account of growing up in the Feeney sect. Separated from her parents and forbidden to speak to them, Patricia bristles against the community's draconian rules, yearning for another life.
About the Author
**LITTLE SISTER - available April 2, 2019**Patricia Walsh Chadwick's unorthodox upbringing - in an excommunicated Catholic commune - is the subject of her first book, a memoir entitled, LITTLE SISTER. From her infancy in 1948, when she was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts until the age of 17, she and the nearly 100 members of the community, including her parents and four younger siblings, lived a life shielded from the outside world - without television, radio, newspapers or any exposure to the events of the day. She, together with the 38 other children born within the community, were being raised to dedicate their lives to God, rejecting family, marriage or children of their own. As she matured into her mid-teen years and experienced a number of innocent crushes on the men within the community, she was deemed unfit, and at the age of 17, she was banished from her home and for the first time she faced the world, devoid of family, money, advice or the opportunity to attend college. From that inauspicious beginning, Patricia began the long trek of her career, starting as a receptionist in the Boston office of Ladenburg, Thalmann, a brokerage and investment banking firm. By dint of sheer determination, she worked her way up the corporate ladder. For nine years, she attended college in the evening, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Boston University's Metropolitan College, with a degree in Economics. Moving to New York in 1975, she capitalized on the opportunities in the fanancial world, eventually becoming a Global Partner at Invesco. Along the way, she develolped a passion for the opera, theater and global travel. In her fifties, Patricia embarked on a second career, as an expert witness and a corporate board director, allowing her the flexibility to raise her twin children. Today, in addition to her board work, Patricia dedicates much of her time to pro bono activities. She sits on the advisory board of Boston University's Metropolitan College and she chairs the advisory board of Elon University's Love School of Business. She is also a member of the board of The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. For more than twenty years, Patricia has been dedicated to mentoring inner city girls in the Catholic schools in New York City. Today she sits on the advisory board of Partnership Schools and Our Lady Queen of Angels School in East Harlem where she works with middle school girls whose motto is: Dare to hope, promise and dream. In 2016, Patricia co-founded and is the CEO of Anchor Health Initiative, a company that provides primary care to the LGBTQ community in Connecticut. She is married and lives in Connecticut with her husband. They have a daughter in graduate school and a son who works in Manhattan.
