I have read this author since her Barbara Samuel days, and even a few Ruth Wind category novels. She is an "auto buy" for me. A good read always guarenteed; she's not let me down even once. But this book was something more. With each novel, O'Neal gets better, digs deeper, does more than transport me, but more something like transforms me. I'm saying this clumsy, the things she says clear.

Notice I don't give summaries of stories. Today, after finishing this book, I needed to vent. A few of the elements of this book spoke right to my heart. The heroine is a lapsed Catholic. So am I. She is a Unity minister--I also left Catholicism for Unity. Looking for answers, seeking spirit. This is what O'Neal does so well here. She portrays what it feels like to be without answers, to smack up against evil, to live in a world of ambiguity.

As for Unity, when my church in Detroit had the good fortune to hire Marianne Williamson as our minister, I could not believe it. Williamson reminds me of O'Neal in her unrelentingly honest search for truth. I'd read Williamson, and worked A Course in Miracles in a dark period of my life and so to hear that one of my favorite authors would be lecturing every Sunday at my church, well, that was my miracle. But Williamson is Jewish...Unity is Christian.

If there's one quibble I have with the spiritual aspect in O'Neal's book, it is the problem I ultimately had with Unity. Because Williamson is a Jew, she eventually got the boot. I see things in a broader more inclusive way than just Christian. There are other religions and spiritual paths. I gotta say, though, that O'Neal got all the touches right, for both Catholic and Unity. And I think that without putting it into direct words, she also went beyond Christian beliefs in some of the later passages.

Now having talked about all the spiritual aspects of this book, there's much more to it. There's love (of course!) and conflict and trouble and redemption. There's something almost holy about O'Neal's prose. She's not a "christian" writer. This is that kind of book. It's a novel that goes beyond borders of what a love story should be, what a religious calling should be, and what spirit can do.