Spoiled with beauty, riches, and adoration, a young girl from vila is sent to a convent by her parents to learn discipline, but discovers instead an unparelleled spiritual fervor one so powerful as to be condemned as sinful by some. She is Saint Teresa known as a mystic, reformer and founder of convents, and the author of numerous texts that introduced her radical religious ideas and practices to a society suffering through the repressive throes of the Spanish Inquisition. In Barbara Mujica s masterful tale, her story her days of youthful romance, her sensual fits of spiritual rapture, secret heritage as a Jewish convert to Catholicism, cloak-and-dagger political dealings, struggles against sexual blackmail, and mysterious illness unfolds with a tumultuous urgency. Blending fact with fiction in vivid detail, painstakingly researched and beautifully rendered, Mujica s tale conjures a brilliant picture of sister-hood, faith, the terror of religious persecution, the miracle of salvation, and one woman s challenge to the power of strict orthodoxy, a challenge that consisted of a crime of passion her own personal relationship with God.

"Eschewing sacred sentiment for rich, gritty anecdotes, Sister Teresa, Barbara Mujica's well-researched novel reimagines famed 16th-century Teresa of Avila as a vibrant and fully fleshed woman not above vanity, deceit, and a little pre-convent hanky-panky." -Entertainment Weekly