Chosen Boys

He wonders how big God's hand is. If he has an eye that can see the whole world in a glance, his hand must be big enough to reach out of the sky and pluck him up with his giant fingers. It is 1974 and seven-year-old Jack leads a carefree life, playing in his Auckland street. But when a new priest selects him to train as an altar boy, Jack's world is imperilled and he shrinks away from his community, his friends and his mother. Chosen Boys explores what happens to a community when they are betrayed by those meant to care for their spiritual wellbeing. Set in a working-class Catholic community against the backdrop of the dawn raids, Molloy's moving debut novel asks the question: who will act when a predator declares himself 'another Christ on Earth'? This is the first novel to explore child sex abuse in the New Zealand Catholic Church. It is an affecting, moving drama about the hubris of an institution that claims moral authority yet ignores child abuse and the effects this abuse has on children and their communities. I wrote this book because of the profound hurt I feel at the Catholic Church's betrayal of its people, in particular its most vulnerable-its children, says Petra, whose family has been Catholic for generations. Child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is now being investigated by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions (New Zealand, 2018), making these issues more relevant than ever. Renee described the novel as rich, haunting, [and] beautifully written.