Becky Feinstein is well-acquainted with unexpected tragedy. Growing up in New York City during the turbulent 1960s, she has already experienced her brother’s death in Vietnam and her family’s gradual drifting apart. So when her closest friend suddenly becomes gravely ill, this nice Jewish girl decides to give her an unconventional gift by lighting a candle in a big gothic church on Lexington Avenue.

Little does she realize, as she passes through the heavy wooden doors of Saint Vincent Ferrer’s, that after this afternoon nothing will ever be the same. For there, lighting a candle for a friend, she discovers someone waiting for her in the “still, quiet place” of her heart . . .