Beverly Donofrio thought she was finally living the life God intended for her. A spiritual, divorced, 55-year-old woman, she was enjoying an idyllic existence, residing in an upscale artists' enclave in Mexico and toying with the idea of joining a religious monastery. Then her life was shattered when she was awakened in the middle of the night and raped by a stranger at knifepoint. In the terror of the moment, she felt compelled to recite the Hail Mary prayer aloud, in Spanish, even though the incident, after the fact, tests and challenges her understanding of God, faith and the nature of belief.
In an effort to move past the evil of the attack, Donofrio set off on a six-month emotional and spiritual pilgrimage in search of healing at five American monasteries. In retreat, she turns to solitude, prayer and writing as a means of transformation, reflecting on her fate and meditating on the wisdom and inspiration of the saints and other spiritual thinkers. Along the way, she visits friends and family and wonders if God is calling her to use her experience to deepen the meaning of her life--and future. But how?
Throughout the narrative, Donofrio grapples with making a commitment to the religious life, unabashedly revealing her worldly weaknesses and flaws. The candid, stream-of-consciousness prose style of this intimate memoir supports the thought-provoking message it offers to seekers on their own paths of contemporary spiritual enlightenment. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines