The 1980 execution of four U.S. Catholic women missionaries at the hands of security forces in El Salvador galvanized North Americans. Searing media images of the disinterred bodies of Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missioner Jean Donovan awakened the general public to the atrocities of the incipient Salvadoran Civil War as well as to the U.S. military aid that propelled the conflict. In her biography of Maura Clarke, Eileen Markey revisits this event by detailing a life of profound dedication to faith-driven efforts for social change. In so doing, she not only adds to the considerable literature documenting the international incident, but she also supplies an accessible account of the transnational politics of foreign missions and the emergence of social justice-oriented ministries in communities of women religious.

There is something of a hagiography surrounding the four women. Existing individual biographies of Ford and Donovan supplement scores of more general works that detail the prehistory and aftermath of the women's time in El Salvador. And there are compelling factors driving this interest. All four renounced the comforts of home in an attempt to secure a measure of justice and human dignity for marginalized people, and their deaths as ordinary U.S. citizens who put extraordinary commitments into action supplied politicized narratives of martyrdom that continue to stir secular and religious activists alike. The killings were a critical touchstone for the Reagan-era antiwar and Latin American solidarity movements, and the circumstances under which the missionaries lost their lives shed light on the dynamics of the U.S. Cold War in Central America and the transformations in the global Catholic Church following Vatican II.

Markey delivers an admiring portrait of Clarke. Devout and deeply empathetic, a nineteen-year-old Clarke joined the Maryknoll Sisters in 1950. Her years of service trace an arc in Catholic foreign mission practice that stretches from anticommunist triumphalism to the postconciliar era's left-leaning emphasis on peace and justice. Clarke struggled to reconcile the preconciliar premium on legalism and religious hierarchy with the needs of the impoverished, disenfranchised populations among whom Maryknoll worked. She felt these tensions acutely during her long tenure as a grade school teacher and principal in the mining town of Siuna, Nicaragua. Her vocational journey also gives a window into Maryknoll's navigation of the upheavals of Vatican II renewal, which shifted the ideological foundations of mission and transformed the sisters' community life. Most intriguingly, the biography supplies a valuable perspective on the fall of the Somoza dynasty in 1970s Nicaragua, elaborating the synergy between the pastoral work assumed by church agents like Clarke and Sandinista efforts for revolution.

Signaling the author's background as an investigative journalist, the biography is written with approachable, expressive prose and an emphasis on narrative detail over analysis. While relaying the moving personal story, Markey makes worthwhile historical observations. She outlines the deep roots and broad impact of the transnational revolutionary movements that nurtured Clarke's social consciousness and dedication to peoples' movements. Clarke's father's involvement with the civil war-era Irish Republican Army shaped Clarke's responses to the uprisings of the oppressed. As she worked among the dispossessed who would become the base of the Sandinista revolution, she cast aside the presumptions of American exceptionalism and virulent anticommunism that propelled Maryknoll's early efforts and would continue to justify heavy-handed U.S. interventions in Latin America throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Revealing anecdotes of Clarke's interpersonal encounters in Central America illuminate her close connection to larger sociopolitical forces: pouring tea for Anastasio Somoza Debayle during his approving visit to a Maryknoll mission; providing pastoral care to Amada Pineda, whose published testimony of torture at the hands of security forces helped turn the tide of Nicaraguan public opinion against the Somoza regime; and participating in organizing efforts alongside Father Fernando Cardenal, eventual Minister of Education in the Sandinista government. She volunteered to transfer to El Salvador as a response to the request of Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was assassinated shortly before she arrived, for international witness to the abuses of the Salvadoran government. When the deaths of the churchwomen threw into relief the depravity of a regime that owed its existence to U.S. support, everyday Catholics, the U.S. Left, and many congressional allies launched a powerful, if ultimately insufficient, mobilization against Ronald Reagan's determined attempts to accelerate right-wing counterinsurgency efforts in Central America.

Interviews with Clarke's Salvadoran and Nicaraguan friends and colleagues are a particularly valuable component of Markey's research. Still, these sources are used to flesh out the details of Clarke's life; one hopes that interview records can be made available to future scholars so that the complexities of these stories of human rights atrocities and liberation movements can be further examined. Except for the writings of Anna Peterson, among a few others, English-language accounts continue to foreground U.S. perspectives on the events, enabling the stories of four U.S. women to overshadow the murders, disappearances, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans. The thoroughness of this individual biography also suggests that there is room for broader inquiries into the political killings of religious workers whose stories have not attracted this degree of attention.

Told in an engaging style and backed with extensive research, the book will hold considerable appeal for readers who have a special interest in the churchwomen. It offers a rich account of Clarke's life and ample background on late twentieth-century shifts in institutional Catholicism and U.S.–Central America relations. It does not closely engage the historiography. Readers seeking more thorough social and political history would be better served by scholarly inquiries into Maryknoll missions and the El Salvador murders, such as the work of Dana Robert, Phillip Berryman, and many others.