Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore starred in a cheesy 1969 movie called Change of Habit. The story line was that Elvis (as a doctor in the ghetto) was such an attractive force that Moore (as an undercover nun) couldn’t resist falling in love with him. Well, that was an unseemly turn of events for a nun, so she had to choose between The King and God; guess what she chose?
Newly published author Alice Loweecey (nee Orso), likewise, is a former nun, but it wasn’t Elvis that changed her mind. The Syracuse native, and Buffalo resident, will be happy to talk about her life choices at a book signing for her debut tome, Force of Habit (Midnight Ink, Woodbury, Minn.; 299 pages; $14.95/softcover).
“I attended Catholic school—Assumption Academy on North Salina Street—back in the days when there were lots of nuns,” she said from her suburban Buffalo office. “It looked glamorous to me, and I was into rebellion, so what better way to rebel than to enter a convent.”
Since she is an only child, her parents—who she said always wanted grandchildren— weren’t too keen on her career choice. “After four years, I decided I’d made a bad decision and I left, which was quite difficult,” she noted. “The lifestyle was not how I needed to be living my life: It’s restrictive; it’s not Sister Act.
When I left I had to learn how to put on makeup again, and dress and put on high heels.”
A writer from a young age, Loweecey, 49, enrolled at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and majored in English. “I have been writing since I was 9,” she said. “I have destroyed reams of angsty poetry that I wrote as an angsty teenager. My dad and I watched horror movies on Friday nights ever since I was 5. This book is an ex-nun, private eye mystery. I am a former nun, but I am not a private eye. I queried an agent and assured him that I know religion, since I used to be a nun. I know religious horror.”
The result: a three-book series featuring protagonist Giulia Falcone, formerly Sister Mary Regina Coelis. “The second book is already in my editor’s hands, and the third is in my head right now,” Loweecey said. “I would ultimately like to be a novelist. Generally, mysteries take a while to catch on because they tend to be written in series. I would love to write full time, but I would need to make enough to cover health insurance since that is the driver of all these days.”
Her current life is quite different from the one she left at the convent, which used to be housed in the former Maria Regina campus along Court Street. Married to Philip Loweecey and the mother of two teenage boys, she works in HIV research at Frontier Science in Amherst, outside Buffalo.
“I taught English for a while and acted in amateur theater for years,” Loweecey said. “At one time I performed with the Salt City {Center for the Performing Arts} Playhouse, which I understand is now gone.”
Loweecey’s final local stop on her book tour comes to Barnes & Noble, 3454 Erie Blvd. E., DeWitt, on Wednesday, March 23, at 7 p.m. For more information, call 449-2948.
—Molly English-Bowers
Sister twister: Alice Loweecey comes to town on Wednesday, March 23, to promote the first of three mystery novels, Force of Habit.
