“The Mermaid Chair,” by Sue Monk Kidd.
Sue Monk Kidd’s phenomenal debut, The Secret Life of Bees, became a runaway bestseller that is still on the New York Times bestseller list more than two years after its paperback publication. Now, in her luminous new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans. Telling the story of Jessie Sullivan — a love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul — Kidd charts a journey of awakening and self-discovery illuminated with a brilliance that only a writer of her ability could conjure.