LEAP OF FAITH

Expelled from public school and forced to attend parochial school, a skeptical pre-teen finds friendship as well as faith. Sixth-grader Abby had always been a good girl with no track record for trouble until she stabs classmate Brett McAvery in the school lunchroom with a smuggled knife. Abby had warned everyone, including her clueless parents, that the popular Brett was sexually harassing her, but no one believed her. After “the accident,” Abby’s detached, workaholic parents enroll her in St. Catherine’s Catholic School. Angry with her parents for not trusting her, Abby selects drama as her elective to spite them, but is surprised when she discovers she has acting talent. Just to spite them, she tells her agnostic parents she’s converting to Catholicism, but finds she doesn’t mind the required religion classes and services. As her baptism and confirmation approach, however, Abby must confront her lack of faith and learn how to forgive. Abby’s gradual transformation from religious non-believer into one willing to take a “leap of faith” proves credible and compelling in this sensitively drawn drama of individual free will. (Fiction. 10-14)