Eugene Mirabelli

Maureen Teresa McFinn, a parochial school graduate, changes her name to Terri Heart when she becomes an actress in pornographic movies. Just as she is achieving a kind of shabby stardom, she becomes pregnant. Solitary and in murderous desperation after her baby's birth, Terri has an ecstatic vision during a blinding snow squall. From that moment on she sees that her role is to shelter the homeless and love the loveless, no matter what happens. Told by Michael Bruno, a huge bear of a man, an academic with two ex-wives, a gargantuan appetite and a skeptical view of life. This is the story of Terri Heart, porn actress and practitioner of what the Church calls the corporal works of mercy, an astonishing novel of the sacred and the profane.