Sister Mary Helen, still spry at seventy-something, makes a perfectly innocent mistake—she arrives at St. Colette's Retreat House a week early. Unfortunately, so has a convention of San Francisco priests. Mary Helen, accompanied by her long-suffering old friend Sister Eileen, had hoped for a few tranquil days of spiritual renewal. Instead, she encounters a boisterous group of hard-drinking pastors, a crotchety cook named Beverly, an hysterical dishwasher, an inexplicably nervous resident nun...and a dead body.

Someone has killed a former seminary student and left his corpse under the glorious mountain pines. The local police don't have a prayer when it comes to spotting the real culprit. But perhaps a contemplative nun—with a God-given gift for sleuthing—can see the evil that men do and the telltale clue no one else divines...