With a debut that is at once hilarious and moving, Caitlin Hicks takes readers inside the malleable mind of a quirky adolescent in 1963 as Annie Shea tests her family’s strict boundaries and her own Theory of Expanded Love.

Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the short list to be elected the first American pope.
vDriven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in the parish, Annie is tortured by her own dishonesty. But when “The Hands” visit her in her bed and when her sister becomes pregnant “out of wedlock,” Annie discovers her parents will do almost anything to uphold their reputation.

Questioning all she has believed and torn between her own gut instinct and years of Catholic guilt, Annie takes courageous risks to wrest salvation from the tragic sequence of events set in motion by her parents’ betrayal.