Seventeen Minus Two

About the Book

Many people ask why a 14 year old child would enter a convent and even more ask why she would leave. In Seventeen Minus Two I answer these questions. This book relates not only life in this particular convent in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s but the difficulty of the author to reenter a world she was totally unprepared to meet. Short stories of several of her classmates are imbedded in the book. Two of them have died; one from natural causes, one was murdered. The book tells of a child who experienced abuse and her struggle to overcome her feelings of inferiority as well as a lifelong battle with depression. All her life her main desire was to work within and serve the Church. She continually came up against the authority figures in the Church who disregarded her as a person and devalued what she had to offer.

About the Author

Ginger Kroos was raised in a small town the youngest of seven children. She grew up believing she was dumb and stupid. At age 14 she attended a Dominican Prep School and two years later entered the convent of the Dominican Sisters. After seven years she left the convent in anger and frustration. As if in a kind of free fall she began to search for her identity grasping at anything to discover who she was and what purpose she had for living. Years of depression shadowed her on her quest to discover a place for herself in the world and in the church she desperately wanted to serve.