When Sister Emma and the five women who accompanied her from England crossed the Orange River early in 1874, they exchanged the comfortable mainstream of Anglican Church life for the rigours of pioneering new works in an undeveloped country. Living conditions were primitive, travel was hard, and money was always in short supply. The newly-formed Community of St Michael and All Angels opened the first girls’ schools north of the Orange and the first hospital in the Free State. At Kimberley, Sister Henrietta achieved a world first through her successful campaign for the State Registration of nurses. Four Sisters were besieged in Kimberley during the Anglo-Boer War, and in Bloemfontein their Mother House became a military hospital. By faith and determination the Community recovered. St Michael’s School was raised to new standards of excellence, while the Sisters expanded their mission to include Lesotho and the eastern Free State. Decades of work with Bloemfontein’s sick and deprived led to Sister Enid becoming known as Ma Mohau (Mother of Mercy), and to national acclaim in the 1970s as South Africa’s Mother Teresa.

A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree “An enchanting, sparkling book about the many meanings of sisterhood.” —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29 Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don’t), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self Agatha has lived every day of the last nine years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life. But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They take over the care of a halfway house, where they live alongside their charges, such as the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she has to reckon all on her own with what she sees and feels. Who will she be if she isn’t with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home. Or has she just been hiding? Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make.

In 1940, four nuns sail to the Solomon Islands as missionaries, only to be caught in WWII, fleeing the Japanese. A true story of faith and survival.

"Modern-day badass drag queen superhero nuns"--"It was like this asteroid belt": the origins and growth of the sisters -- "We are nuns, silly!": serious parody as activism -- "A sacred, powerful woman": complicating gender -- "Sister outsiders": navigating whiteness -- "A secular nun": serious parody and the sacred -- New world order? -- Blooper reel -- Studying the sisters

A collection of extraordinary oral histories of American nuns, Habits of Change captures the experiences of women whose lives over the past fifty years have been marked by dramatic transformation. Bringing together women from more than forty different religious communities, most of whom entered religious life before Vatican II, the book shows how their lives were suddenly turned around in the 1960s--perhaps more so than any other group of contemporary women. Here these women speak of their active engagement in the events that disrupted their church and society and of the lives they lead today, offering their unique perspective on issues such as peace activism, global equality for women, and the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The interviewees include a Maryknoll missionary who spent decades in Africa, most recently in the Congo; an inner-city art teacher whose own paintings reflect the vibrancy of Haiti; a recovering alcoholic who at age 71 has embarked on her fourth ministry; a life-long nurse, educator, and hospital administrator; and an outspoken advocate for the gay and lesbian community. Told with simplicity, honesty, and passion, their stories deserve to be heard.

A Las Vegas showgirl, a diner waitress, and a heartbroken alcoholic—three sisters—are called into an obligatory reunion in California’s Central Valley in the late 1990s as a prelude to their mother’s impending death. Inside Diego’s Diner on Highway 99, Lorraine, the eldest of the sisters, attempts to convert the truckers and regional farmers to her religious beliefs while managing the counters and booths. Becky, the youngest, lurches into this scene after a night’s drunken romp. Meanwhile, middle sister Julie is en route on a bus from Las Vegas, where she’s just ended a long career as a Riviera showgirl. Overshadowing the longstanding tensions between the three women is the unexplained disappearance of the sisters’ long-absent father from their lives. Julie is reluctant to return to River’s End, but she makes a valiant attempt to jump-start her life again once she gets there, even as she confronts the loss of the beauty she’s long used to mask her insecurities and failed relationships. Meanwhile, Becky struggles to stay sober and out of jail—and Lorraine throws herself into cheating her sisters out of their inheritance.

With First World War casualties mounting, there was an appeal for volunteers to train as front-line medical staff. Many women heeded the call: some responding to a vocational or religious calling, others following a sweetheart to the front, and some carried away on the jingoistic patriotism that gripped the nation in 1914. Despite their training, these young women were ill-prepared for the anguished cries of the wounded and the stench of gangrene and trench foot awaiting them at the Somme. Isolated from friends and family, most discovered an inner strength, forging new and close relationships with each other and establishing a camaraderie that was to last through the war and beyond. Based on the previously unpublished true stories of its nurses and medical staff, this book is a heart-warming account of the joys and sorrows of life in an extraordinary Somme field hospital.

Two of the most fascinating religious figures in medieval literature are Chaucer's Prioress, Madame Eglentyne, and the Archpriest of Hita's Dona Garoza, from his Libro de Buen Amor. Over the years literary critics have interpreted these characters in a variety of ways: from gentle, mildly sinning creatures, to religious failures, to purposefully ambiguous figures with both characteristics. Daichman begins her discussion by focusing on the medieval nunnery as a social institution and finds abundant historical evidence of indecorous behavior among the nuns. Who were the women most likely to transgress their vows? What were the most common transgressions? Why did these women choose convent life in the first place? What we learn is that many women were sent to the convent against their will, or they chose to go there for reasons unrelated to religious vocation. What Daichman has done is trace the pattern of a long-forgotten literary convention, the profligate nun, reviewing first the works of the medieval moralists and satirists on the subject, and then the popular literature of the time with special emphasis on the "chanson de nonne" and the fabliau. She proves the stock character of the Wayward Nun to be as traditional as that of the Gluttonous Monk, the Disobedient Wife, or the Cuckolded Husband. In developing her premise that the profligate nun of the Middle Ages is not an isolated literary occurrence, but the reflection of the woman in the nunnery, Daichman also provides us with a deepened understanding of two well-known literary figures, Dona Garoza and Madame Eglentyne.

Gypsy kids are running all over, moving from place to place often; not making any real friends. But when an impulsive, careless, and questionable action leads to a horrific accident for one family, two sisters' lives will change forever. Jane with her broken bones--leg and pelvis--and scars on her head and the loneliness she had on waiting and waiting while her sister Jessie laid unconscious for days. Jessie Mohe and Jane Ann thought that they had a simple and easygoing life with their biological parents as they were always playing outside and only had a few responsibilities. As they would play with their other siblings, they would also perform several mischievous acts that would get them into some trouble. Their older immediate family seemed to almost always be around as these harmless schemes would happen, and they would get a good laugh from it all. Where is everyone whom we know personally--our parents, Gpa Jess, Uncle Jerry, and Uncle Bernard--and we are closest to? It's cloudy, and we can't see no one. Where is our life that we knew? Our little brains were working and going around in circles and circles. Our trauma, the anger we had in separate ways. After the accident, they would join their family with a new and very different lifestyle. They would experience new food, people, and unbelievable ways of life. The foster mother would push them to try new things, learn to be independent, and to be better people. As they go through new experiences, she would be right there to guide them. In their adult life, they would figure out many unsolved mysteries in their family, while several would still remain unsolved. The new beginnings of many activities and the challenges of life are still to come--the real happiness of life and what it is really about.