The Eleventh Virgin

About this book

The rare first book (and only novel) by the radical pacifist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. It follows the protagonist, June Henreddy, through adolescence and college and on to her first job, on the staff of a socialist newspaper. She and the book's other characters are embroiled in the issues of the day (pacifism, birth control, free love, etc), and at one point her involvement with the women's suffrage movement lands her in jail -- and her involvement with a man results in an unexpected pregnancy, which leads her to seek out an abortionist. Clearly autobiographical, the book draws on Day's bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village (which included two common-law marriages and an abortion), and was used heavily by her primary biographer as a source for reconstructing the events of her early life. It also predates her embrace of Catholicism by several years, and Day later admitted having put some effort into destroying as many copies of the book as she could find