Books were like old friends, with their worn covers and well-thumbed pages.

How do they manage to go on living?.....By loving life. And-in spite of everything-by loving God. By having enough faith to start over again and again enough faith to risk having our hearts break all over again. That's the true meaning of faith. It's the deepest kind of heroism.

Even her hair, she thought, running her fingers impatiently through the damp golden brown ringlets that curled romantically around her face. A Botticelli angel, a boy in college once called her, begging her to let it grow. Right! That was all she needed: wild curls cascading down her back like a doomed Shakespearian virgin, or a rock star.

It was Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto, Francesca Abraham realized as the radio alarm went off. Lively, unrelentingly upbeat, it was the perfect tempo in which to start the day. Covering her head with a pillow, she reached out blindly and urgently, desperate to shut the damn thing off.