Kneeling to receive Holy Communion at St Saviour's Church in Dublin one Sunday, it suddenly dawns on Magda Finnan how she can earn God's blessing. She vows to kill Father Doran. A cleaner at the St Cosmo Care Home for the Elderly, the nineteen-year-old remains haunted by her upbringing in a Magdalene orphanage. Among her memories of discipline, prescription and the ever-present fear of damnation, one image in particular defies the passage of time: her best friend, Lucy, falling down a deep, dark stairwell to her death.Struggling to reconcile the Order's all-pervading principles with the reality of twentieth-century Dublin, Magda encounters a world that is at once frightening and exciting. But before she can look forward to life outside the orphanage walls, she must lay to rest the ghosts of the past, and for that she must commit a murder. Illiterate and timid, planning such a crime does not come easily to her, but she has made a solemn vow and is determined to see her task through to its very end. Beautifully and movingly written, Bad Girl Magdalene illustrates the chilling influence that a troubled life can have on a simple mind.