Hermits are a rare breed. Married hermits are about as common as spotted owls. Marry a Roman Catholic priest to a former nun, nest them in a mountainside hermitage named Still Wood, and you may have a brand new species. This memoir is a three-way love saga Ð God, a priest and a nun joined to minister to hermits world-wide and to the mentally disabled in the isolated mountain county of ÒBloodyÓ Madison, North Carolina.
Each chapter weaves together incidents from four periods of my life Ð seventeen years in a middle-class Catholic home; thirty spiritually challenging years as a cloistered nun; six transformative years as a hermit, and sixteen loving years as a wife.
My earlier book, ÒWhere God Begins to Be, A WomanÕs Journey into SolitudeÓ has created a crowd of curious readers asking ÒWhy would you?Ó and ÒHow could you?Ó marry a priest and continue your commitment to eremitical life?
Answering this unforeseen Call has colored my autumn years with excitement, love and challenge.