Trail of Thorns The Inner Journey of a Novice Nun

Trail of Thorns takes the reader on a two year journey into a desert monastery with Anne, a young novice nun. She begins her cloistered life with a nighttime ride to Our Lady of the Desert, where the sisters live, raise their own crops, can their own food, bake bread, sew, and fashion hand crafts for sale. They maintain their own buildings and adhere to a strict schedule of prayers, chant, and meditation. This accomplished life is a Cistercian form of Trappistines. Anne struggles: with the chaos of her past, growing up in a large family with an alcoholic father and an enabling mother, with the personalities of each Sister, with her shyness she must overcome. The severe elements of the desert; rattlesnakes, lightning strikes, and the threat of wild boars, are menaces seen as lessons learned, while living with an alcoholic father. It isn t until she is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis that she stops blaming the fast pace of the routine, and considers that the embedded thorns from childhood had to be released before she would know her redemptive power and healing.