“Ann prayed because of a gut-wrenching, throbbing pain in her soul. She urgently begged the Lord for her life.”

“The smile that covered a "multitude of pains" was no hypocritical mask. She was trying to hide her sufferings - even from God! - so as not to make others, especially the poor, suffer because of them. When she promised to do "a little extra praying & smiling" for one of her friends, she was alluding to an acutely painful and costly sacrifice: to pray when prayer was so difficult and to smile when her interior pain was agonizing.”

“Finely dropped her head, squeezed her eyes shut and began silently to do what some might call praying, she called it begging.”

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”

“Lord help her, she didn’t care whereByrne took her. Let hellfire consume her and the devil steal her soul. Because any hell with Byrne in itwas better than a heaven without him.”

“He had to have her, he couldn't wait, the need throbbed through him hot and urgent. But here? On the wooden floor of his brother's gazebo?”