It portrayed motherhood as the highest position that a woman could achieve. For God had made Mary neither a prophet nor the messiah nor the daughter of God. Nor did God take the form of a woman. She was only the womb. She was a perpetual virgin too, and she endured the vilest harassment because of it, or so the story went. Rebecca couldn’t relate to the Virgin Mary at all.

He cut away the insignificant and incidental. Those bits were tossedaway from the juicy core pieces. He slid the excess tissue and tendons away and reorganized the good bits on his plate. Those pieces were translated into words and catchy phrases and assembled like a new life.