In a bluff north of Seattle, overlooking the glorious vista of Puget Sound and the white-capped Olympics, stands Rosary Heights, the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Holy Cross. On a dark night in 1997, a catastrophic mudslide shifts the ground beneath the motherhouse and threatens to send it crashing into the water below. By this single act of nature, the sisters are forced to rethink their place in the world.

With Rosary Heights as a backdrop, best-selling author Catherine Whitney takes a personal journey inside the order that ran the school she attended as a child, the order that, for a short time, she contemplated joining herself. In this rare inside view of their lives of devotion, Whitney reveals how modern nuns are a study in contrast: worldly, yet removed; passionate, yet chaste; subservient, yet fiercely independent. She answers the questions that most fascinate the lay public: What would compel women today to join a religious order? How does faith unite so many women of wildly different backgrounds? What is their relationship—and struggle—with the male Church establishment?

Readers will meet these very human women, at work, at play, and at prayer—in times of crisis and harmony—and grow to enjoy their company. The Calling offers a luminous chronicle of a community that has existed for centuries yet is still evolving, and whose anxieties and joys are utterly relevant to us all, regardless of our beliefs.