Book Title:  Cathedral Women

Author:  Carol Malyon

Publishing Company:  The Mercury Press (www.themercurypress.com)Year:  2006

# of Pages: 172

ISBN #:  1-55128-120-1

$17.95 Canada

$15.95 USA

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner 

4 stars 

One of the chapters of Cathedral Women, by Carol Malyon, is entitled “Quest.”  This could almost be the title of the book.  Tracey is a young woman in her mid-20s on a quest to find her life when her world is turned on end.  Within weeks, she ends her relationship with her first serious boyfriend, loses both her parents in a car accident and, while going through her father's papers, discovers a letter and notebook from her birth mother. 

Tracey's quest begins as she searches for the story of her adoption, for her birth mother, and for her identity.  Is she still Tracey, or is she Angela, the baby given up for adoption?  As Tracey sorts through the puzzle pieces of her life, the reader is given help by the insights of her adoptive parents and her natural mother, sharing their views from the clouds. 

Tracey's search leads her to give up her job at a bookstore and travel on the Ontario Northland Railway through small towns and forests seeking answers to all the questions life has hurled at her.  Throughout her journey, she pieces together a life made of memories of strangers, facts she has gleaned from research and her own imagination. 

Cathedral Women is a lovely work, filled with vivid imagery and raw emotion.  The book is broken into many chapters or segments, each offering a vital piece of the story, but each brief enough to bid the reader to continue to “just one more section” until the book is finished.