Showing results for "A Confession" in Historical

Cloistered in a stone cell at the monastery of Saint Brigit, a sixth-century Irish nun secretly records the memories of her Pagan youth, interrupting her assigned task of transcribing Augustine and Patrick. She revisits her past, piece by piece—her fiercely independent mother, whose skill with healing plants and inner strength she inherited; her druid teacher, the brusque and magnetic Giannon, who introduced her to the mysteries of the written language. But disturbing events at the cloister keep intervening.

Ivy Malone, the New-York Historical Society's librarian, is dedicated to preserving Manhattan's rich history, but when society grand dame Adeline King anonymously reveals her shocking life story, Ivy finds herself holding a highly coveted secret. Burdened with the responsibility of keeping Adeline's identity hidden, Ivy finds the matter increasingly complicated when two men claim ties to the elderly woman—one of them accusing Adeline of involvement in a crime.

An elderly monk is ordered by his abbot to confess the terrible sin he committed as a child. But where to begin? One loose stitch unravels another. A lifetime has passed since he found himself standing alone, a little boy in the snow outside an early, primitive monastery sited at the edge of a dangerous, still-pagan world. He remembers the plagues he survived. He remembers the wars. He remembers the friends who survived neither. He remembers struggling to understand a world inhabited by monks, grave men who, for the most part, used their voices only to sing at the Holy Office.