Chautauqua Girls at Home

Four young women return home from a religious retreat changed in ways they cannot hide. Ruth, Flossy, Eurie, and Ruth came back as new Christians, and now they must face the people who knew them before. Their families don't understand. Old friends grow uncomfortable. The very rooms they grew up in feel foreign now, because they see them differently, and they know they are seen differently too. The book captures that particular loneliness of holding a conviction that sets you apart - of knowing you cannot go back to who you were, and that the world is not particularly happy about who you are becoming. It's a Victorian novel about the courage it takes to be visibly different, and the small daily heroics of trying to live out what you believe when no one around you shares it.