REGINA | 26
While most women she asked were enthusiastic, a few absolutely refused to talk to her about the book.
These were Catholic women who had one thing in common, husbands who were students at the pontifical universities in Rome. Their children happened to be playmates of her daughter, Flo.
Not wishing to deprive Flo of friends, she decided to just put up with their medieval-sounding, cringe-inducing views on sex.
Such was Read’s first uneasy encounter with devout Catholics. To her credit, she had the intellectual honesty to examine without prejudice why these women held so tightly to such ideas, as aberrant, appalling and misguided as they seemed to Read.