The first and only appearance of Sister Martin de Porres, O.P., at the offices of B&B Books of Dubuque, Iowa, had not been a planned part of her sad itinerary that frigid February morning, but her visit was, nonetheless, eagerly anticipated by the publishing house staff.

Fr. Niall Bresnahan, the publisher and founder of B&B Books, joked that until the success of Warrior, Daughter, Saint, he had secretly suspected himself of running a vanity press. The joke, delivered in Fr. Bresnahan's nasal Cork City brogue, usually got a laugh, and quickly joined his repertoire of apparently self-deprecating humor. Fr. Bresnahan had only discovered his skills as a raconteur four years earlier, when he had been assigned to the Archdiocese of Dubuque--some would say exiled--as Censor Librorum and assistant Cathedral Chaplain. In Dubuque he took up the game of golf and learned, to his surprise, that middle Americans found his accent charming.

Conceived over cocktails in a country club bar, Burke & Benedict Books soon matured into a thriving business. Fr. Niall Bresnahan's own prolific pen supplied the early catalog: Learning the Suscipiat: the Struggles of an Irish Altar Boy (1971), Non Serviam: The Contraceptive Mentality in Modern American Life (1972), and The Feel-Good Trap: How the Pursuit of Pleasure Leads to Despair (1972) all appeared within three years of that fateful golf outing.

Shortly after the death of Nora Quinn Larkin, in February 1974, two of her nine daughters felt bold enough to make long distance calls to Italy. At the Villa Schifanoia in Florence, a polite young lady answered the phone, and went to fetch the Dean of Art History. Later, comparing notes, the two sisters agreed as to how polite the young lady was, how vast the transoceanic silence seemed when they were put on hold, and how the cost didn't matter, not at a time like this. Soon Sister Martin de Porres was making plans to come home to Dubuque, for the first time in forty-two years.

The car was immense—the largest, perhaps, of all the large cars she had seen since returning to America. Sister Eunice introduced herself to the driver, and saw the flicker of disappointment on his face. Quickly she smiled and complimented him on the size and solidity of the car.

"It's an Oldsmobile, ma'am. I mean Sister. It's Father Bresnahan's."

The Oldsmobile left the grounds of the Mother House, and turned onto County Z.

Sister Eunice looked at the countryside. Here, near the Mother House, the farmland was rich and flat. Big houses. New barns. Even the fences were crisp, well-maintained. Her own mother, who had been born on a hilly farm, a hard place, beautiful but rocky, had always resented the farmers who owned this land. "Those rich people," her mother would say. Sister Eunice wondered what they were like now, these farmers. Rich like the Italian rich? Of course not. Rich like the Catholic families of Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston who sent their daughters to study in Florence? Perhaps.

In the summer of 1925, at the age of sixteen, Eunice Larkin could read la lingua italiana at the level of a university undergraduate, write it as well as a bright student at liceo, but she spoke the language come una orfana—like an orphan. Eunice secretly wondered whether a miserable child in an Italian orphanage had it any worse than the nine Larkin sisters crowded into two bedrooms in Dubuque, but she kept her bocca shut and accepted the assessment of her abilities. She had no choice: the double-edged evaluation came from the only person in the world with whom she communicated in italiano: her teacher, La Signora Caporicci.

Forty-nine years later, as she crossed the Mississipi in the back seat of Fr. Bresnahan's Oldsmobile, Sister Eunice Larkin remembered those two articles about Matilda of Canossa and that moment of self-disgust, a flickering recollection, dancing or shuddering between the warm soft glow of piety and the harsh cold light of reason. La Signora must have known that Eunice was on some kind of cusp—that she hungered, in a way, for both versions, both Matildas, both worlds. The girl, holding on to her childhood, wanted to believe in a holy warrior princess; the young woman, who already knew that Dubuque held no future for her, wanted to scrub away the lies. What La Signora could not have anticipated was the intensity of both reactions.

Well, thought Sister Eunice, looking down into the swirling waters that divided a continent, that was how it began—the crisis of faith that led to my vocation.