THE LIGHT THAT CARRIES: A Novel of Hildegard Bingen

In twelfth-century Germany, a girl sees a light no one else can see. Given to the Church as a child, Hildegard learns that survival depends upon silence. But the living radiance within her will not be contained. It commands her to write-and draws her from the enclosure of a remote monastery into conflict with abbots, popes, emperors, and the limits placed upon women who dare to speak with authority. As Hildegard builds a community of her own, her visions bring recognition, suspicion, friendship, and devastating loss. Yet the greatest trial comes at the end of her life, when obedience to the Church threatens the music at the heart of everything she believes. Intimate, searching, and quietly luminous, The Light That Carried reimagines Hildegard of Bingen not as a distant saint, but as an intelligent, difficult, courageous woman discovering that faith is not certainty-and that the light she spent her life defending had carried her all along.