Marcelle Bernstein

After thirteen years as Sister Gabriel in a Welsh convent, Anna has begun to question her calling when a crisis summons her outside the convent walls. Her brother Simon has committed suicide and left his pregnant wife Lynn with two small sons. The family woolen mill is on the verge of bankruptcy. Anna knows the business: she contributes to her convent's income by carding and spinning yarns that she dyes with natural colors from nuts and mosses. Lynn's whiny self-pity, her children’s confusion and fear and the mill's imminent ruin impel Anna to try to save the family.
At the plant she confronts Beattie,the unscrupulous manager who harasses female workers and has plans to switch to cheaper synthetic fibers. Years of living an ordered and orderly life, submitting to convent rule, have not prepared Anna to deal with a whiny sister-in-law and the rough-mannered manager. Those years also did not prepare her to deal with her physical attraction to the honest, brash, overseer, Peter.
What she does know how to do is work. She begins to put both family and mill on a working basis and to enjoy the give and take of the world outside the convent. These abilities force her to make the tough decisions required as she is torn between religious and secular life… (meer)