The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

Like Rose years before, her daughter considers the benefits of not knowing ``what was going on''.as the recent visitor-small, sad Tom Clinton-drives off, and Cecilia knows that Rose, who left before he came, will never return. The last narrator is teenaged Cecilia, struggling to find her elusive mother within the competent Rose, who's moved into her own house away from husband and daughter. The next narrative belongs to Son, a huge man originally from Tennessee-like Rose, gone forever from home-who recounts the last moments of his fiancÇe's life long ago (Sister Evangeline absolves him of responsibility) and who loves Rose.

But in the home, once a grand hotel, Rose keeps her baby, Cecilia marries ``Son,'' the handyman (``God was right after all.I was supposed to live a small life with a man I didn't love'') and becomes the cook after briefly assisting that terrible cook, sage/seeress, and font of love, Sister Evangeline. Elizabeth's home for unwed mothers, where she plans to have the baby Tom will never know about, and to give it clean away. From San Diego, then, Rose drives-``nothing behind me and nothing ahead of me''-all the way to Kentucky and St.

``Maybe I was born to lie,'' thinks Rose, who, after a three- year marriage to nice Tom Clinton, realizes that she's misread the sign from God pointing to the wedding: she married a man she didn't love. Within the security of everydayness, minds and hearts take grievous risks. The Patron Saint of Liars is the best-selling debut novel that launched Ann Patchett's remarkable career, and its genesis is the subject of her now-famous treatise on writing, 'The Getaway Car,' included in her 2013 essay collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.Patchett's first novel, set in rural Kentucky in a castle-like home for unwed mothers-where a good woman finds she cannot lie her way beyond love-has a quiet summer-morning sensibility that reminds one of the early work of Anne Tyler. Elizabeth's she cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind, even as she cannot change who she has become in the leaving. Rose's past won't be kept away, though, even by St. Elizabeth's extended family of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls. But when Cecilia is born, Rose makes a place for herself and her daughter amid St. She plans to give up her child, thinking she cannot be the mother it needs. Not so Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed, and stays. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while.

The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett