The patron saint of liars

Winner of the 2002 Orange Prize for her novel Bel Canto, Ann Patchett's stunning first novel is about 'pilgrimage and healing...A fairy tale.

A delight.' It is the 1960s. Rose Clinton arrives at St Elizabeth's, a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky.

Rose is a young woman who has decided, to be 'a liar for the rest of my life'.

She is pregnant but also married (athough at St Elizabeth's she claims to be unwed), fleeing her dull but loving husband without telling him she is pregnant.

Nor does she tell her widowed and much-loved mother, whom she also abandons in penance for leaving her marriage.

Rose plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs.

But St. Elizabeth is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she realises that she cannot go through with her plans.

It is also clear that Rose cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind; by the ever-watchful Sister Evangeline; by the love of Son, the handyman at St.

Elizabeth; or later by the birth of her daughter Cecilia.