GORDON, MARY

born Dec. 8, 1949, Long Island, N.Y. in full Mary Catherine Gordon American writer whose novels and short fiction deal with growing up as a Roman Catholic and with the nature of goodness and piety as expressed within that tradition. Raised in an observant Catholic family (her father was a convert from Judaism), Gordon was educated at Barnard College, New York City (B.A., 1971), and Syracuse (New York) University (M.A., 1973). Her first novel, Final Payments (1978), was a critical and popular success. The protagonist, Isabel, is 30 before she leaves home, having cared for her domineering father for 11 years until his death. Soon she has friends, a career as a social worker, and several married lovers. Feeling the need to atone for her "self-indulgence," she becomes the caregiver to her father's former housekeeper, a woman she hates. In The Company of Women (1981), the character Felicitas is nurtured by a large circle of Catholic women. After attending only parochial schools, she goes to Columbia University, New York City, where she becomes sexually involved with a married professor, gives up her studies, and becomes pregnant. She returns to the company of women, gives birth to her baby, and later marries only to provide a father for her child. Gordon's later works include a collection of short stories, Temporary Shelter (1987), and the three novellas in The Rest of Life (1993); the novels Men and Angels (1985), The Other Side (1989), The Shadow Man (1996), and Spending (1998); and two works of nonfiction, Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing (1988) and Good Boys and Dead Girls and Other Essays (1991).