Jo Shepherd grew up on a farm in the Pacific Northwest under the loving care of her grandfather, Frank. After spending months nursing him through his final painful illness, Jo receives a vision of the Virgin Mary, who sends her to Italy to live out her dream of becoming an artist. In doing so, Jo must leave behind her home and her best friend Jack, and risk losing him forever. In Florence, Jo’s intense artistic visions begin to find fruition, but her odyssey is complicated when she meets Chad and Walter, two extraordinary young men. By day, Jo paints–women in a marketplace, the view of the Arno from the Piazzale Michelangelo. At night, both Chad and Walter vie for her attention. As the lives of these three friends become more deeply entwined, the revelation of painful secrets threatens to destroy their delicate balance. It isn’t until Jo returns home that she begins to face up to the legacy of her time in Italy, her very real grief for the grandfather she lost, and the prospect of a future with or without Jack. "This debut novel is both haunting and wise in its insights on love, loss, and longing. Told with humor and warmth, the story of Joanna’s self-discovery is as vivid as it is inviting. [A] lyrical, languorous tale of enlightenment." — People "A strongly personal story with a fascinating main character. . . Schneider’s descriptions of the artistic process are nothing short of excellent. The meditation on connections between people and home, and the push and pull of finding maturity, ring real. . . An enjoyable summer read." — Denver Post "Faultless prose, lit by faith, hope and love." — Seattle Times Jo Shepherd grew up on a farm in the Pacific Northwest under the loving care of her grandfather, Frank. After spending months nursing him through his final painful illness, Jo receives a vision of the Virgin Mary, who sends her to Italy to live out her dream of becoming an artist. In doing so, Jo must leave behind her home and her best friend Jack, and risk losing him forever. In Florence, Jo?s intense artistic visions begin to find fruition, but her odyssey is complicated when she meets Chad and Walter, two extraordinary young men. By day, Jo paints?women in a marketplace, the view of the Arno from the Piazzale Michelangelo. At night, both Chad and Walter vie for her attention. As the lives of these three friends become more deeply entwined, the revelation of painful secrets threatens to destroy their delicate balance. It isn?t until Jo returns home that she begins to face up to the legacy of her time in Italy, her very real grief for the grandfather she lost, and the prospect of a future with or without Jack. "This debut novel is both haunting and wise in its insights on love, loss, and longing. Told with humor and warmth, the story of Joanna’s self-discovery is as vivid as it is inviting. [A] lyrical, languorous tale of enlightenment." — People "A strongly personal story with a fascinating main character. . . Schneider’s descriptions of the artistic process are nothing short of excellent. The meditation on connections between people and home, and the push and pull of finding maturity, ring real. . . An enjoyable summer read." — Denver Post "Faultless prose, lit by faith, hope and love." — Seattle Times Katie Schneider and her husband divide their time between Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Oregon.  This is her first novel. From the Hardcover edition. ONE My grandfather spent his life mending fences. So much of his life that it seemed like a religion. Thou shalt not let thy barbed wire sag. On our farm, Frank single-handedly built a straight line of barbed wire that stretched for acres. He attacked repetitive work like prayer; for him, it was a kind of Zen meditation, a fingering of rosary beads. Dig holes, drive posts, splice wire. Dig holes, drive posts, splice wire. Frank's sharp and shining metal fences were not about keeping anyone out or, for that matter, keeping anything in. They marked his territory, squarely for all to see. Frank knew every inch of ground on his property—he'd walked and worked and fenced it all, from the time he was a boy shooting groundhogs with his .22 right up to the day he became housebound with bone cancer. He might've said it was his destiny, that farmland, those dry pine woods that came to him through his grandfather. The straighter the fence, the clearer the connection to the past, the better the possibility for the future. That is one of the things I always understood about my grandfather, his curious attachment to fences, and I guess I have always had it too. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here in the high desert of eastern Washington, dressed in heavy jeans and steel-toed boots on a ninety-degree day, working on the line. I wouldn't be on the farm at all, much less out in the front pasture. Frank died six years ago, so there is no one here to make me do it. There is no one back at the house to ask me how it went. The ground underneath my feet ba