Behind the stone walls of Santa Croce delle Pietre, time belongs to God.

The bells divide the day. The Rule governs the body. Silence is meant to purify the soul.

For fourteen years, Sister Beatrix has survived by becoming exactly what the abbey requires: obedient, watchful, disciplined, untouched. She has learned to bury every hunger before it can be named.

Then Sister Ilaria arrives.

A widow from the world beyond the cloister, Ilaria is everything Beatrix has trained herself not to be—warm, restless, unguarded, alive. Assigned to instruct the newcomer in the Hours, the Rule, and the silence, Beatrix instead finds herself drawn toward a dangerous intimacy neither woman can easily confess.

What begins as a brush of wool in the choir becomes a voice in the dark, a hand offered in a forbidden dance, a longing that turns prayer itself into something trembling and uncertain.

In a house built to make women disappear into obedience, Beatrix and Ilaria discover the peril and holiness of being seen.

Written in lush, lyrical prose with a sensual, devotional intensity, M. Calloway’s debut work is a sapphic historical novella about forbidden love, religious devotion, desire, and the sacred terror of choosing one particular heart in a world that demands surrender to all else.

For listeners of Sarah Waters, Madeline Miller, and Sierra Simone.