When, more than twenty years ago, Kathleen Norris began attending her grandmother's small-town church on the Great Plains, she was a transplanted poet with more doubt than faith. Still, the strong pulls of tradition, family history, and community found her week after week at Sunday-morning services. In returning to church, Norris' greatest struggle was with the language of the Christian religion. She found she had to wrestle with it, grapple with its meaning and make it her own before she could embrace its blessings and grace. Kathleen Norris is an award-winning poet and the author of THE CLOISTER WALK and DAKOTA: A SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY. Her most recent book of poetry is LITTLE GIRLS IN CHURCH. She lives in South Dakota. "...a book whose hospitality extends not just to Christians or religious seekers, but to anyone drawn by what its author celebrates as 'the living word'.