Publisher's Synopsis
Forty-two and married for half her life, Jessie Sullivan honestly believes that she is happy. She has a lovely home, a good dependable husband and an accomplished teenage daughter. But when she returns to the remote island of her childhood, to establish the cause of her mother's increasingly strange behaviour, Jessie is drawn to Brother Thomas, a Benedictine monk on the verge of taking his final vows. Amid the seductive beauty of South Carolina salt marshes and tidal creeks, their encounters awaken an immense sexual and spiritual desire in Jessie. As the relationship deepens, she is torn between her powerful new longings and her enduring marriage...