With her rigorous research underpinning the narrative, Cadwallader has taken this restricted setting, and a time frame of little more than a year, to craft the absorbing and finely structured story of a young woman’s spiritual journey and her relationship to her body. The austere setting highlights the author’s poetic gift for sensory detail: the touch of stone, and the smells and sounds that drift in from the outside world.

Sarah’s first-person narrative is interspersed with third-person accounts of her confessor, Father Ranaulf, the scribe in charge of copying holy texts for her edification. The written word, a powerful tool wielded by the church and executed exclusively by men, plays an important role in the novel, providing action, tension, and a testing ground for Sarah’s spiritual quest.

In this surprisingly suspenseful tale, Sarah discovers that walls will not keep out the powerful forces that have driven her to this sanctuary. Her woman’s voice has the quiet intensity of a devotional chant. The pellucid prose, with occasional arcane words flavouring the simple vocabulary, is layered with meaning and metaphor, using a symbol of flight as the perfect frame for the story.

The contemplative tone of this beautiful novel leaves behind a feeling of calm and restoration, and a deeper sense of the power of the written word and of the myriad ways in which freedom can be experienced. And maybe the ghost of a writer, locked away, on her own spiritual journey.