Pocketful of pearls

the long version

At a crossroads in his life, college professor Matthew Nicholas goes wandering. Penniless and malnourished, he comes to the back step of a remote ranch house, where a reserved young woman, Dinah Traynell, feeds him, then hires him as a handyman. Matthew soon finds himself drawn into Dinah's awful story: for years, she's been the mistress of a self-annointed, monstrously smug prophet. She can hardly imagine life outside the cult, but Matthew opens her eyes, and together they overcome their unhappy histories in this affecting story that rips away hypocrisy and replaces it with trust.