Jaded Ibis Press, a feminist and social justice-oriented publishing house, is pleased to announce the publication of Kingdom of Women, a debut novel by Latina feminist author Rosalie Morales Kearns, on December 1, 2017 (ISBN 978-1-937543-42-6).

Kingdom of Women tells the story of Averil Parnell, the world’s first female Roman Catholic priest. As the novel opens, in a slightly alternate near-future, women are forming vigilante groups to wreak vengeance on violent men. Averil faces a dilemma: per the Golden Rule she should advise forgiveness, but as the lone survivor of an infamous massacre of women seminarians, she understands the women’s anger.

She becomes embroiled in an affair with a handsome young sociopath and forms a friendship with a female assassin; the three of them gradually form a dysfunctional triangle of attraction and repulsion, love and obsession. At the same time, Averil is beset by unwanted religious visions: she sees the souls of dead monks, converses with Jesus, slips into alternate realities.

She had planned to be a scholar, before the trauma of the massacre. Later, all she had wanted was a quiet life as a parish priest. But now she finds that she has become a mystic, and a central figure in the social upheaval that’s gathering momentum all over the world.

Novelist Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder, calls Kingdom of Women a “brilliant, moving novel that delves deep into questions of revenge and compassion, justice and mercy.”

About the author: Rosalie Morales Kearns, a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, is a product of Catholic schooling from kindergarten through college. She earned a B.A. in theology from Fordham University and has had a lifelong interest in religions, especially grassroots religious traditions, visionary experiences, and Afro-Caribbean spiritualities. She is the founder of the feminist publishing house Shade Mountain Press and author of the magic-realist story collection Virgins & Tricksters (Aqueous, 2012), praised by Marge Piercy for its “succinct, smart tales rooted in a female-centered spirituality.” Kearns has an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Illinois.

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Website: rosaliemoraleskearns.wordpress.com/kingdom-of-women
Twitter: @RMoralesKearns

Reviewers and other journalists: for advance review copies or to arrange an interview with the author, contact Elizabeth Earley, Publisher, Jaded Ibis Press.