This is, then, a painful tale of growing up in a transforming church, a story with which many adult Catholics will identify.

Among them are the 24 who told their painful tales en route, just a few stories from the vast global saga of people in motion.

Many of the doctors interviewed by Dr. Groopman volunteer a painful tale of misdiagnosis, but the effect, oddly enough, is heartening.

It is one of many misunderstandings that apply a comical distress to the surface of a more painful tale.

Where the narrator has been, how long he has been away and just how much his painful tales are to be trusted all remain shrouded in mystery.

"Road Song" could have been a saccharine tract about the triumph of the human spirit or such a painful tale that even reading it would hurt.

She offers painful tales of lost love but then expresses the resolve to move on.

So does the complete absence of panaceas in this painful tale.

Well-spoken and energetic, Mr. Stewart, 37, tells a painful tale of the slow emergence of his homosexuality.

Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale.