Rose watches her mother line her mouth and eyes, smearing color onto pale cheeks and adjusting wisps of hair. "Pretty girls have it harder," she says to Rose. "Always people there to tell a pretty girl what she should be doing or thinking." This is the apex of spiritual connection between this mother and daughter. Seeking direction, a way to make sense of her restlessness, Rose prays daily before lighted candles for a sign from God. Nun or wife? When the marriage fails to fulfill her, Rose feels God's omen must have been misinterpreted. Hence begins her rash and hasty journey into a world where lies quickly muffle the past. This fear of facing the responsibility of choice, of reflection, keeps this woman emotionally alienated from herself, from her own daughter, and from the reader. Young women of Rose's social class are rarely taught the empowering skill of the power of choice. This is, perhaps, the most pertinent message of the novel. But it is an obscure story, and the reader must grope for meaning. ~--Christine Schlenker

Unanticipated pregnancy makes liars out of young women, this thoughtful first novel shows, as they try to rationalize, explain, and accept what is happening to them. When she arrives at St. Elizabeth's, a home for pregnant girls in Habit, Kentucky, Rose Clinton seems as evasive and deceptive as the other unwed mothers. But Rose is different: she has a husband whom she has deserted. Unlike most St. Elizabeth's visitors, she neither gives up her baby nor leaves the home, staying on as cook while her daughter grows up among expectant mothers fantasizing that they, too, might keep their infants. The reader learns from Rose how she came to St. Elizabeth's, but it is her doting husband and rebellious daughter who reveal her motives and helpless need for freedom. Together, the three create a complex character study of a woman driven by forces she can neither understand nor control.-- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.