Audiobook Sample: Saints for All Occasions (Fiction)
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM) North American (US Mid-Atlantic)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Saints for all Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan, read by fleece. Breakfast was served promptly at eight. She slipped into the re factory a minute before the hour and took her seat. There were, at present, 37 of them. They ate their meals in silence at too long, thin wooden tables side by side, no one facing anyone else. She and the mother abbess sat together at a small head table Today, as usual, the others bowed before them as they filed in. Because Mother Cecilia recalled with perfect clarity when they were a pair of young postulates, this always took her by surprise. While they ate their eggs, their bread and jam, she noticed Sister Alma looking at her from across the room. Mother Cecilia nodded, and the girl nodded back with a sad smile. She supposed sister Alma, would come to her afterward, seeking counsel, as she often had recently. In four days time, she would make her final vows. They had all been anticipating it, making preparations in the kitchen and the guest quarters. On Thursday, Sister Alma would become mother Alma, a permanent member of their community. You weren't supposed to be more or less fond of one girl or another. But mother Cecilia couldn't help privately favouring some sister. Alma had arrived seven years ago with a master's in fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. She was a painter in New York who had begun to show her work in galleries to make a name for herself. But then she felt called to something greater. She came to the abbey wearing platform sandals with black leather straps that wrapped around her calves and address that was longer in the back than it was in the front. Like many of them, Sister almost started as an intern. She lived in the women's guesthouse for four months and helped with the harvest. She mopped the church floor and scrubbed the pails the nuns used to churn butter. At the end of her term, she asked for a meeting with mother Cecilia. Of all her jobs, the role of novice mistress was the most essential mother. Cecilia was the one who helped them decide whether or not they belonged here. In that first meeting, Sister almost spoke of how with 30 had come. The realization that many of her friends were only playing at poverty. Once some milestone was reached, a birthday or a marriage or birth, they moved into million dollar brownstones. They invited people over for brunch in the garden, and everyone commented approvingly on their beautiful furniture, their elegant sense of style. No one asked where the money came from, perhaps because they knew rich parents or a fortuitous marriage or a fortuitous marriage to someone with rich parents. Suddenly, after a decade devoted only to ideas and emotions, things had become paramount.