Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India
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Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India is a lyrical account of Anita Mathias’s turbulent Roman Catholic childhood in Jamshedpur, India, “The Steel City,” a company town, benevolently run by the Zoroastrians of Tata Steel. Catholic social life and the Catholic church, run by American Jesuits, was an enveloping cocoon. Mathias escaped volatile fights with her mother by compulsively reading everything she could find. Finally, Mathias, known as “the naughtiest girl in school,” was expelled, aged nine, and sent to a Himalayan boarding school, run by German nuns. The virtual end of childhood!