Product Overview
After eighteen years of secrecy, culminating in one of the greatest scandals ever to befall the Catholic Church, here at last is the true - and the only authorized - account of Annie Murphy and her love affair with Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway, Ireland. Romantic, spellbinding, and often shocking, the haunting passion of this profound love story is quite simply unforgettable and rivals any in recent fiction.
Annie Murphy came to Ireland from the United States in 1973 after the breakup of a turbulent marriage. She made the trip hoping to find spiritual peace under the guidance of a distant cousin, Eamonn Casey, then Bishop of Kerry. Instead, she found a charming, dynamic man - and the attraction was immediate and mutual. Within weeks the two were lovers, caught up in a whirlwind romance at Casey's hilltop retreat on the Atlantic coast.
Fifteen months after Annie's arrival, she and Eamonn became parents. But sadly for Annie, the love Eamonn felt for her - and the Church - did not extend to his son, Peter. Fearing scandal, the Bishop did everything possible to force Annie to give Peter up for adoption - and even went so far as to interfere with her medical attention when she developed a life-threatening infection after the birth. When Annie resisted and returned to America to raise her child alone, the Bishop did his best to cover up Peter's existence, shunning contact with his secret family and providing only sporadic financial support.
Despite Casey's efforts, however, knowledge of Peter - and the Bishop's affair with Annie Murphy - could not remain a secret forever. In May of 1992, Annie and the son the Bishop tried so desperately to hide went public and forced Casey to acknowledge the truth. The disclosure caused Casey, the Bishop of Galway, to resign from his diocese - and added fuel to the ongoing debate over the Church's positions on celibacy, birth control, abortion, and the role of the clergy.
Forbidden Fruit is an astonishing and unique story of a union so powerful it rocked the foundations of the Catholic Church. Replete with intrigue, drama, and breathtaking emotion, it is ultimately a story not only of deception and denial but, most important, of love and forgiveness. For despite all the controversy, the extraordinary passion between Annie Murphy and the Bishop of Galway blazed so brightly that it still reverberates through both their lives, all these years later.
