The calling of Mother Adelli

the long version

"Former ballerina Mary Agnes Adelli, now a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart and newly appointed Mistress of the Third Cours, expects to make final vows in just nine months when a late registrant, a sixth grade student, Helene Rhenehan, enters her life. Enraged at being abandoned by her doctor father, the perceptive ten year-old channels her fear and desire to retaliate toward the nun. Helene rightly intuits that Mother Adelli is easy prey, for the twenty-eight year-old nun is riddled with fault lines that only wait for stress sufficient to cause their eruption. Helene, in her furious misery, creates a three-ring circus in the prim and proper school. Things spiral downward with dizzying speed, disintegrating Mother Adelli's standing with her students and attacking the fault lines of her persona as a religious. Can discipline, reason, good intentions and prayer bring about the change needed before the girl damages other lives besides her own? The Calling of Mother Adelli is a coming-of-age-tale of a young woman caught in a Gordian knot with great institutions"--Amazon.com.