"The book that the whole literary world can't stop talking about." --Marie Claire (Australia)
"A considerable achievement." --Sarah Dunant, The New York Times Book Review

England, 1255: Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister as well as the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world--with all its dangers, desires, and temptations--and commit herself to a life of...