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 Chairis 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.

Sue Monk Kidd is the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and several acclaimed memoirs. The Secret Life of Bees was chosen as the Booksense Book of the Year for paperback and Kidd is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poets & Writers award.

CHAPTER ONE February 17, 1988, I opened my eyes and heard a procession of sounds: first the phone going off on the opposite side of the bed, rousing us at 5:04 a.m. to what could only be a calamity, then rain pummeling the roof of our old Victorian house, sluicing its sneaky way to the basement, and finally small puffs of air coming from Hughis lower lip, each one perfectly timed, like a metronome.Twenty years of this puffing. Iid heard it when he wasnit even asleep, when he sat in his leather wing chair after dinner, reading through the column of psychiatric journals rising from the floor, and it would seem like the cadence against which my entire life was set. The phone rang again, and I lay there, waiting for Hugh to pick up, certain it was one of his patients, probably the paranoid schizophrenic whoid phoned last night convinced the CIA had him cornered in a federal building in downtown Atlanta. A third ring, and Hugh fumbled for the receiver. iYes, hello,i he said, and his voice came out coarse, a hangover from sleep. I rolled away from him then and stared across the room at the faint, watery light on the window, remembering that today was Ash Wednesday, feeling the inevitable rush of guilt. My father had died on Ash Wednesday when I was nine years old, and in a convoluted way, a way that made no sense to anyone but me, it had been at least partially my fault. There had been a fire on his boat, a fuel-tank explosion, theyid said. Pieces of the boat had washed up weeks later, including a portion of the stern with Jes-Sea printed on it. Heid named the boat for me, not for my brother, Mike, or even for my mother, whom heid adored, but for me, Jessie. I closed my eyes and saw oily flames and roaring orange light. An article in the Charleston newspaper had referred to the explosion as suspicious, and there had been some kind of investigation, though nothing had ever come of itothings Mike and Iid discovered only because weid sneaked the clipping from Motheris dresser drawer, a strange, secret place filled with fractured rosaries, discarded saint medals, holy cards, and a small statue of Jesus missing his left arm. She had not imagined we would venture into all that broken-down holiness. I went into that terrible sanctum almost every day for over a year and read the article obsessively, that one particular line: iPolice speculate that a spark from his pipe may have ignited a leak in the fuel line.i Iid given him the pipe for Fatheris Day. Up until then he had never even smoked. I still could not think of him apart from the word isuspicious,i apart from this day, how heid become ash the very day people everywhereome, Mike, and my motherogot our foreheads smudged with it at church. Yet another irony in a whole black ensemble of them. iYes, of course I remember you,i I heard Hugh say into the phone, yanking me back to the call, the bleary morning. He said, iYes, weire all fine here. And how are things there?i This didnit sound like a patient. And it wasnit our daughter, Dee, I was sure of that. I could tell by the formality in his voice. I wondered if it was one of Hughis colleagues. Or a resident at the hospital. They called sometimes to consult about a case, though generally not at five in the morning. I slipped out from the covers and moved with bare feet to the window across the room, wanting to see how likely it was that rain would flood the basement again and wash out the pilot light on the hot-water heater. I stared out at the cold, granular deluge, the bluish fog, the street already swollen with water, and I shivered, wishing the house were easier to warm. Iid nearly driven Hugh crazy to buy this big, impractical house, and even though weid been in it seven years now, I still refused to criticize it. I loved the sixteen-foot ceilings and stained-glass transoms. And the turretoGod, I loved the turret. How many house