Synopsis

When Theodora, a young woman who left Greece to seek work and opportunities her country couldn't offer, decides to return home, no one can imagine her true purpose. She has decided to infiltrate the Orthodox Church's holiest site, Mount Athos, under false pretenses, where no woman has ever been admitted. What drives Theodora to leave her family and friends celebrating her return, cut her hair and pose as Theodoros, a young pilgrim traveling the monasteries of the sacred peninsula? Perhaps it's the example of her uncle Euthymios, a devotee of the Vatopedi Monastery, who instilled in her the allure of that place of peace and prayer? Or perhaps it's a search for her own roots and a lost serenity never found anywhere else? But the sacred mountain isn't exactly what she expected, and sin, intrigue, and deception exist even within the walls of monasteries: Theodora will soon discover this to her own cost. Technology and spirituality, purity and corruption, feminism and religious fanaticism, a novel set in a mysterious place like Mount Athos, where the story of a woman in search of herself intertwines with age-old rites as well as dark and dangerous political maneuvers.