From the acclaimed author of the #1 Indie Next Pick LYDIA CASSATT READING THE MORNING PAPER and SOMEONE NOT REALLY HER MOTHER comes a powerful new story about our yearning for wholeness and the enduring weight of our briefest encounters. Back from a tour of duty in Vietnam, Benny Finn, eldest son in a large Irish-American family, strives to find his bearings amid the everyday life of 1973 New England. At a Benedictine abbey in rural New Hampshire, Sister Clare, a young novice, confronts the day-to-day realities of a cloistered existence. Linking these two is Isabel Howell, a college student soon to discover that she must chart the course of her own life in a way she could not have imagined. Deeply felt, often luminously moving, THE BEAUTY OF ORDINARY THINGS carries forward the promise of Harriet Scott Chessman's earlier work, revealing a writer richly aware of the range of human tragedy and tenderness.