336 pages. Donated 2010 May.

Sadness, passion, faith, and laughter fill a home for unwed mothers. Set at St. Elizabeth's in Habit, Kentucky, this is the story of Rose, an obstinate, complex young woman fleeing her first marriage who seeks temporary sanctuary but instead finds a permanent place among the nuns when she decides to keep her child and marry the groundskeeper.

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind ... and who she has become in the leaving.