Sue Monk Kidd’s stunning debut, The Secret Life of Bees,
has transformed her into a genuine literary star. Now, in
her much-anticipated new novel, Kidd has woven a
transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans and
cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable writers
at work today.
Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on tiny Egret
Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a
beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with
mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a
mermaid before her conversion.
Jessie Sullivan’s conventional life has been "molded to the
smallest space possible." So when she is called home to
cope with her mother’s startling and enigmatic act of
violence, Jessie finds herself relieved to be apart from
her husband, Hugh. Jessie loves Hugh, but on Egret Island—
amid the gorgeous marshlands and tidal creeks—she becomes
drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is mere months from
taking his final vows. What transpires will unlock the
roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, as
Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle
to deny it, she will find a freedom that feels
overwhelmingly right.
What inspires the yearning for a soul mate? Few writers
have explored, as Kidd does, the lush, unknown region of
the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual
and the erotic exists. The Mermaid Chair is a vividly
imagined novel about the passions of the spirit and the
ecstasies of the body; one that illuminates a woman’s self-
awakening with the brilliance and power that only a writer
of Kidd’s ability could conjure.
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