Weaving together ethnographic, historical, and theological insights to examine a variety of Marian shrines throughout the United States, American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism from editors Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park offers a valuable contribution to the study of US Catholicism. The volume’s strength is its narrow framing—each essay is focused on one or two specific shrines—combined with its wide embrace of interdisciplinary methodologies, perspectives, and social locations. Consider, for example, the way Lloyd Barba’s ethnographic account of a graffiti artist’s Guadalupe mural shrine in Los Angeles is sandwiched between historical studies of a San Antonio Lourdes replica and a Boston shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, written by Adrienne Nock Ambrose and Patrick J. Hayes respectively. This diversity of approaches appropriately reflects the wide-ranging perspectives of US Catholicism.

Major themes addressed by contributors include contested notions of sacred space, most notably Stephen Selka’s study of the Chicago shrine to a Marian-shaped salt stain that blurs sacred and profane, as well as Kayla Harris’ article exploring how the digital shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception challenges the containment of the sacred to physical space; the limits of ecclesial power overlay religiosity, most notably illuminated by Joseph Laycock’s article on the controversial Marian apparition shrine in 1970s Queens that led to the legal battle of local clergy and neighbors against contested visionary Veronica Leukin and her followers; and the ways Marian shrines shape and are shaped by immigrant identities, like in David Endres’ reflection on the Our Lady of Consolation Shrine in Carey, Ohio, where generations of diverse immigrant communities have mixed and mingled ethnic Marian devotional traditions. Each article reflects the interpretive framework proposed by the volume’s editors, which is to approach Marian shrines as “conversations” that “flow freely, guided only loosely by voices, both lay and ecclesial, and allowed to evolve and change with changing cultural landscapes” (p. 9). Using conversation as an interpretive lens inevitably puts storytelling at the heart of each article, and this story-centered approach is what makes the volume so compelling to read.