Some 15,000 women are graduates of Mercy High School in southeastern Michigan. Since 1945, when it opened as Our Lady of Mercy High School in northwest Detroit, its graduates have embodied the school motto: "Women Who Make a Difference." In 1965, the school moved from its original building on the Mercy College campus to a mid-century modern building 11 miles away in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. The school was established by the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic religious order with 6,200 sisters worldwide. Among its graduates are luminaries in the arts, medicine, sports, business, government, and military service. The Mercy Marlins sports teams have won numerous state championships in swimming, basketball, hockey, softball, lacrosse, golf, and other sports. This book commemorates Mercy High's 75th anniversary and reflects the impact of "Mercy Girls" on their communities, country, and around the world.

In these linked stories, the constants are the places—from Eight Mile High, the local high school, to Eight Miles High, the local bar; from The Clock, a restaurant that never closes, to Stan’s, a store that sells misfit clothes. Daniels’s characters wander Detroit, a world of concrete, where even a small strip of greenery becomes a hideout for mystery and mayhem. Even when they leave town—to Scout camp, or Washington, DC, or the mythical Up North, they take with them their hardscrabble working-class sensibilities and their determination to do what they must do to get by. With a survival instinct that includes a healthy dose of humor, Daniels’s characters navigate work and love, change and loss, the best they can. These characters don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves, even when they stumble. They dust themselves off and head back into the ring with another rope-a-dope wisecrack. These stories seem to suggest that we are always coming of age, becoming, trying to figure out what it means to be an adult in this world, attempting to figure out a way to forgive ourselves for not measuring up to our own expectations of what it means to lead a successful, happy life.

Since 1845, along the River Raisin in the southeastern Michigan town of Monroe, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) have distinguished themselves as educators, activists, and Catholic pioneers. At the congregation's peak, the motherhouse dispatched nearly 1,600 nuns to more than 100 schools across metropolitan Detroit and several states. For 175 years, the sisters taught the three Rs and the meaning of faith to nearly 700,000 students and established important metro Detroit institutions such as Marygrove College, Immaculata and Marian High Schools, and St. Mary Academy. Widely known by their initials, the IHMs have extended their reach worldwide. Monroe IHM members have served in key roles at the Vatican, as leaders of organizations representing Catholic sisters in the United States, as missionaries in Third World countries, and as groundbreaking activists and theologians. The Monroe IHMs today also attract lay women and men who dedicate themselves to the congregation's values and goals by becoming IHM Associates.

"Includes 6 full-length practice tests"--Cover.