The Stone Sphere

“There is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word, and a tormented soul finds peace in confessing.”       Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

The Stone Sphere  by Suzanne E. Greco, published by Ekpyrosis Press in May/June 2025

 At the crossroads of personal rupture and global reckoning, this book chronicles one woman’s journey from the silence of child/clergy sexual abuse to speaking at the United Nations. In prose both raw and luminous, the author traces her battle to escape an abusive marriage following her public disclosure of childhood abuse, and her unlikely ascent through Harvard Divinity School to become a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Woven throughout these pages are the voices that steadied her—David F. Holland, her brother, God, and ancestors—and the convictions that drive her: that religious institutions must be held accountable, that parish archives belong to the people they record, and that healing is a right, not a privilege. Moving between the LDS and Italian Catholic hierarchies, she exposes systems that prize reputation over moral ethics, even as she insists on staying in the “trenches” to help remake them. Part memoir, part manifesto, this book invites readers into a spiritual commons where transcendence is shared, not gated; where genealogies mend broken stories; and where the long-suppressed testimonies of survivors bend the moral arc toward justice. It is, ultimately, a call to listen, believe, and act.

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Traversing a Jungian path to healing, the author interweaves profound insights from theology, metaphysics, and science, exploring the harrowing realities of incest and clergy sex abuse, trauma, and the insidious patterns of intergenerational abuse. The author draws upon a rich tapestry of scholarly voices such as Diana Russell, Antonio Damasio, Peter Levine, Judith Herman, Dan Allender, Bessel Van Der Kolk, N.T. Wright, Terryl Givens, and more.

This book was written amidst escaping domestic abuse after coming forward and speaking the truth about having been abused sexually as a child, as such its writings poignantly reflect the conditions and emotions of that period. This book is a living monument, a tribute to all who have suffered the atrocities of sexual violence. May ecclesiastical and political leaders hear the call for reform and step forward to enact change. If a worldwide memorial were erected for all the souls, both living and dead, who have braved the unseen battles of sexual abuse, it would be a colossal memorial indeed. Dr. James N. Poling shared, “... thousands of persons live in hell every day because they are the victims of sexual violence.” Abuse simply does not occur in a vacuum; it is a relational web woven together, affecting each one of us. “... we are what and who we are largely because of what we have been given by others. It means that we create each other, that we are quite literally derived from each other.”