Product details
- ISBN 9781841150505
- Weight: 250g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 07 Apr 2003
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The first novel from the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award.
It is 1968. Rose Clinton arrives at St Elizabeth’s, a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky. Rose has fled her dull but loving husband without telling him she is pregnant and has decided to be ‘a liar for the rest of my life’. As penance, she has also abandoned her widowed and much loved mother, with no mention of her condition.
Rose plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth’s is home to a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she realises that she cannot go through with her plans. Nor can she remain untouched by those she has left behind; by the ever-watchful Sister Evangeline; by the love of Son, the handyman at St. Elizabeth; or later by the birth of her daughter Cecilia.
Enchantingly graceful, Ann Patchett’s first novel is about sanctuary and pilgrimage, pain and healing and the helping hand of chance.
Ann Patchett was born in Los Angeles in 1963. She is the author of Taft, The Magician’s Assistant and Bel Canto for which she won the Orange Prize 2002. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award. She has also written for numerous publications including, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Vogue, GQ, Elle and Gourmet. Ann Patchett lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
