A person walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost-but not quite-unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones.

THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER is raw, honest and completely captivating. Kathleen Kent takes what would seem to be a familiar subject and gives it a fresh, new perspective-moving us through a wrenching gamut of emotions as she does so. A searing look at one of the worst periods in our history.

If you're skating on thin ice, you might as well dance.

To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.

Children don't heal as well.. they change.. they mutate with disaster and make accomodations.

Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.

Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.