In 1955, a group of Trappist monks set out from their motherhouse in Kentucky to found a new abbey in Missouri.The stories of their struggles and successes describe an era of American monasticism predating the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The canonical hours and other services were still sung in Latin, and the monks were divided into four groups: the choir monk priests, choir monk novices and scholastics, and lay brothers. The daily routine of the choir monks involved primarily chanting and study, with a few hours of physical labor, while the lay brothers tended to most of the farm chores. These distinctions were blurred after the reforms, and services were thereafter conducted in the predominant language of each country, English in the case of the United States.The fictional Abbey of Our Lady of Saint Bernard is situated in the state of Missouri, during a time when Jim Crow still flourished and where, in the Bible Belt, Roman Catholicism was viewed with deep distrust.