I recently read Stained by Jennifer Richard Jacobson.

Stained is set in a small New England town in the seventies and deals indirectly with sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. The main character sometimes feels like an outsider because her father left when she was young and her mother raised her without religion. The local priest is telling her boyfriend that he should stop seeing her because she is a sinner and her neighbor/love interest has disappeared and was last seen leaving the church late at night.

Each chapter, the story switches back and forth between the past and the present, which can be a bit confusing and disrupts the flow of the narrative. Otherwise, it’s a pretty compelling reading despite the religious overtones.

~posted by Liz