“What would Mary Do?” brings a human, feminist angle to an old repressed story, by putting the frame of mind of GOd's outrageous request (having a baby out of wedlock-out of a relationship, at great personal risk) into a modern young woman.
Mary is a modern, prudish college student. An Angel shows up in her room and tells her she’s pregnant - with God’s Baby. She freaks out, thinks she’s going crazy. Why her? She’s a nice girl, but not very devout and not a trailblazer. This is 2010, not the old Bible days. She reads how Mary of the Bible took the news. Apparently, that Mary simply said yes. Just like that. Wouldn’t she have been scared? Couldn’t she have been stoned for having a baby without a man? Mary finds none of that in the Bible.
And now it’s happening to herself -in today’s world? She goes from feeling afraid to unworthy, upset to cheated. She considers giving the baby away, struggles alone with oscillating anxiety, and then finally finds peace and is ready to accept it. But how will she tell her boyfriend? Will they tell others or keep this quiet?
After Mary talks to them, her boyfriend Joe and best friend try to get her to see a counselor. They think she is hiding some tryst or is repressing an assault. Then Joe believes her, but her best friend says that her Christian beliefs are threatened by Mary’s lies and she rejects Mary. Mary and Joe get married and plan to raise this promising child quietly. But Joe turns out to be a jerk, and Mary ends up having the baby on her own.
The novel is set in modern days in diary format. By the emotions that modern Mary endures, the readers of “What would Mary Do?” get a new appreciation of the Bible’s glossing over what Jesus’ mother had to go through. How would an iPod- cell phone using girl react to being put in charge of raising God’s child?
