St. Frances of Rome: Visions in a Roman Palace

A 12-year-old girl dreams of the cloister. Instead she is married to a Roman nobleman.

What follows is one of the most astonishing lives in the history of the Church: a wife and mother who, while changing diapers, nursing plague victims, and surviving war and exile, sees heaven and hell with open eyes and is accompanied every single day by her visible guardian angel.

In the middle of ordinary family life she feeds hundreds from empty cupboards, turns her palace into a hospital, loses everything in fire and sword, and finally founds a new kind of community (women who pray like enclosed nuns yet serve the poorest of Rome without walls).

This is the story of a married woman who became one of the greatest mystics who ever lived, proof that the highest graces are not reserved for those who flee the world, but sometimes given most abundantly to those who stay and say yes in the mess.

Warm, vivid, and deeply comforting, this book reads like a novel and feels like a long drink of hope for every wife, mother, widow, or anyone who has ever wondered whether their ordinary life can truly become holy ground.

A modern classic in the making. You will finish it different than you began.