Sanctity — Orania Papazoglou

"Why do you want to be a nun?" asks the Reverend Mother of three young women entering the convent. The answer to that question brings passion, terror, even murder.

Sanctity is a compelling and authentic novel of psychological suspense set within the ivied walls of the motherhouse of the Society of Mary, in contemporary suburban Connecticut. Three postulants arrive one September morning at the convent gate, all with intricate reasons for wanting to be nuns. Kat O'Brien, worldly and sophisticated, as spirited as she is spiritual, finds herself unaccountably willing to relinquish her family -- and her lover, David -- to serve God. Annie Bliss, sweet and querulous, wants desperately to escape her childhood poverty, dreaming secretly of money and glamour. And Jane Calloway, excruciatingly pious, believes not in sanctity but in sin.

Which of these three women will survive the Order's rigorous examination program to become a fully professed nun? Which of these women will survive? Against the backdrop of matins, vespers, homesickness, Examen of Conscience, lust, and Chapter of Faults creeps a growing and malignant horror.

A bell rope resembling a noose; strange sounds and lights from the tower at night; dismembered birds on the convent lawn; stolen amphetamines -- all are strands in an ever-tightening web that could ruin the convent and drive Kat and her friends to madness and death.

Annie withdraws to her fantasy world; Jane seems even more eerily perfect. Even as Kat struggles with her lover and her alcoholic mother -- who would kidnap her to keep her from making the "wrong" choice -- she discovers a gruesome chain of events that only the strongest of women can survive.

Sanctity is a heart-stopping, immensely authoritative, and utterly involving glimpse of life in today's American convent -- a convent where sin is as potent and haunting a vocation as sanctity itself.