From Our Hearts There Is No Distance: The True Account of an American Farm Girl Who Joined a Rural French Convent Between World Wars and Grew Closer to God in Bloomington, MN

Mary Margaret Doyle, 16, left her North Dakota family farm in 1919 with an eighth-grade education, no real knowledge of France, and an unshakable faith in God to follow a mysterious Catholic French nun who envisioned a new sisterhood of nuns in Provins, France. Her letters to her supportive, loving family retrace her journey, from her voyage on one of the first civilian ships permitted to go to Europe after World War I to the series of economic and political challenges that she encountered. Sister Margaret's first-person observations, peppered with wit, innocence, and faith, provide a unique view of church-state relations, the rise of Hitler, and the importance of faith in one's life that remain relevant in the 21st century.