WESTBOROUGH – Journalist, Westborough resident and author of “Unto the Altar of God,” Larry Maloney, will hold a “meet and greet” at Tatnuck Bookseller on Saturday, Sept. 25, from 1 to 3 p.m.
Now on sale at Tatnuck and through Amazon, Maloney’s book describes what happens when a teenage seminarian’s dream of becoming a priest clashes with a love of freedom instilled by an idyllic boyhood in the Western Pennsylvania of the ‘50s and ‘60s.
“The book contrasts the rigid, rule-laden environment of the seminary with the enticements of the real world, including a young seminarian’s growing love for a girl who wants to become a nun,” said Maloney, a former deputy editor of U.S. News & World Report in a press release.
The world that this book describes, a Catholic minor seminary in the 1960s, has virtually disappeared. As late as 1967, more than 130 high school seminaries operated in the U.S., with over 20,000 students, according to the Washington-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. In 2021, only two high-school boarding seminaries still function in this country.
“Nowadays, the idea of boys entering a seminary right after eighth grade may seem completely absurd,” Maloney said, “but that was accepted practice through much of the 20th century.”
He added that the book is not about religion but about growing up, as the young seminarian struggles to find his true self amid all the tumult of the 1960s.
Tatnuck Bookseller is located at 18 Lyman Street in Westborough.
