Fall From Grace Summary
Andrew Greeley

Fall From Grace Summary

The epigraph of the novel is taken from II Corinthians 5:17: "The old things have passed away; behold new things have come." Fall From Grace is an attempt to deal boldly with the new and often frightening order of things in contemporary society. The novel deals frankly with the changing character of marriage and its lost expectations and ideals. In a parallel plot, it deals with the apparent loss of ideals and expectations in the Catholic Church and the hypocrisy of some of its priests. However, the novel is also an affirmation that the real ideals in society's institutions will endure despite the "new things which have come."

The quest motif is the spine of this Greeley novel. Kieran O'Kerrigan searches for the answer to why his childhood love might be asking him to perform an AIDS test on her and her three children and why she has bruises...

(read more from the Short Guide)