Bantam
July 2008
On Sale: June 24, 2008
Featuring: Bernadette Sullivan; Tom Kelly
496 pages ISBN: 0553589709 EAN: 9780553589702 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
With every New York Times bestseller, Luanne Rice illuminates yet another of the secret wonders of the heart. Her unforgettable evocations of family, friendship, and loves lost and won in such novels as The Edge of Winter, Sandcastles, and Summer of Roses give voice to our most powerful emotions. Now she brings back two of her most beloved characters to tell of their journey across the sea to unravel the mysteries of a shared pastβand two undying love affairs.β¦
What Matters Most
Sister Bernadette Ignatius has returned to Ireland in the company of Tom Kelly to search for the pastβand the sonβthey left behind. For it was here that these two long-ago lovers spent a season of magic before Bernadetteβs calling led her to a vocation as Mother Superior at Star of the Sea Academy on the sea-tossed Connecticut shore. For Tom, Bernadetteβs choice meant giving up his fortune and taking the job as caretaker at Star of the Sea, where he could be close to the woman he could no longer have but whom he never stopped loving. And while one miracle drew them apart, another is about to bring them together again.
For somewhere in Dublin a young man named Seamus Sullivan is also on a search, dreaming of being reunited with his own first love, the only βfamilyβ heβs ever known. Theyβd been inseparable growing up together at St. Augustineβs Childrenβs Home, until Kathleen Murphyβs parents claimed her and she vanished across the sea to America. Now, in a Newport mansion, that very girl, grown to womanhood, works as a maid and waits with a faith that defies all reason for the miracle that will bring back the only boy sheβs ever loved.
That miracle is at handβbut like most miracles, it can come only after the darkest of nights and the deepest of heartbreaks. For life can be as precarious as a walk along a cliff, and its greatest rewards reached only by those who dare to risk everythingβ¦for what matters most.
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