Fireflies in the Garden

St. Agnes Academy has a new principal, Father Benet, and a classroom of ten-year-olds that includes Sister Mary Gilbert, straight-A-student Mary Brown, and a precocious scholarship boy, Henry Harvin. Students report on their heroes: Mary's is Jesus Christ, whose middle initial she says is "H" - their former principal, an aging nun whose picture is on the wall, told her so. Henry's hero is Karl Marx. Sister Gilbert sends Harry to see the principal. He walks past moms gathered for a PTA meeting, chats with Ms. White, the school's secretary, and enters Fr. Benet's office for punishment. Father takes out a varnished paddle with holes in the blade. Who will get his comeuppance?

At the age of ten, Henry James Hermin, a boy who was conceived in a petri-dish and raised by his feminist mother, follows a string of Post-It notes in hopes of finding his biological father.