New York Times Bestseller: In Victorian Britain, an affluent woman hosts a group of Catholic priests in her home-and listens as they tell their stories.

Rose, a young girl visiting her grandmother, sits among eleven priests from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. As each guest shares the most challenging moments of their vocations, tests of faith that have brought them face-to-face with the miseries, temptations, and evils that lurk beyond the peaceful confines of the rectory, their worldly, wealthy hostess and her granddaughter come to learn the struggles and outcomes of these confrontations with the human condition.

"The priests themselves represent a mixed lot-men of exalted backgrounds, culture, worldly experience, who have found their hardest task bringing themselves down to the humble people of their flocks; men who understand only the intellectual, realistic aspects of their faith-and must learn to accept the mystical as well; men who hide their saintliness under uncouth exteriors, who learn the hard way to love their fellow men, who encounter devils as well as saints, murderers, sinners. . . . Lively reading." -Kirkus Reviews