As she moved away towards the chapel a puff of wind caught her veil, blowing it back, and they saw she had a scar on her left cheek . . . The Sisters of Béthanie, a French order of Dominican nuns, dedicate themselves to caring for those on the margins of society. But for Soeur Marie Lise, the struggles of these outcast women are entwined with her own troubled past. Once she was Elizabeth Fanshawe, a spirited English girl in postwar Paris, who found herself employed at one of the city's smartest brothels and rose to become the notorious and successful madam known as La Balafrée - the Scarred One. Through Lise's vivid experience of prison, conversion and redemption, Rumer Godden weaves a deeply moving and clear-sighted tale of darkness and hope. But even as Lise makes peace with her past, its legacy is threatening to strike at the heart of the convent itself. 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHER '[Godden's] distinctive, poised and unsentimental books have never lost a shred of their almost hypnotic appeal' ROSIE THOMAS 'A dramatic story of manipulation, violence, double-dealing and redemption' FINANCIAL TIMES