In this book we meet a frivolous teenager, who became a frivolous nun at twenty-one, hoping thereby to avoid marriage and childbearing and attain heaven, without too much effort. Teresa of Avila writes engagingly and honestly, allowing us to follow her struggles with not only her health, but with the conflict between her desire for a life of prayer in a real relationship with God and her attachment to the comforts and distractions of her not- at- all strict convent. Such is her style of writing, and Ruth Obbard’s interpretation of it, that one feels as if reading a personal letter, heart speaking to heart.