Bissell was a teenager, when a powerful religious experience led her into a cloister in pursuit of divine, unconditional love.
Fifteen years later, her abbess sends her home to Puerto Rico to care for her ailing parents. While there, she meets and falls in love with Padre Vittorio, a handsome Italian priest/professor at the University of Puerto Rico.
Moving from cloister to tropical island to romantic Italy, the story traverses a landscape of laughter, rage, and tears as Bissell learns that human longing is a but a prelude to life’s most perplexing questions.
Purchase the Scent of God
In 2006, the Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl a Best of
2006 Minnesota Authors for her first book: The Scent of God: A Memoir
(Counterpoint 2006, 2007), and a "Notable" Book Sense selection for
April 2006. Her second book, A View of the Lake, (Lake Superior Port
Cities Inc. 2011) was named a Best Regional Book for 2011 by the Minneapolis
Star Tribune. Meanwhile Beryl is working on her third book, "The Glass
Calyx: A Mother's Story" which picks up where The Scent of God
leaves off and limns the years leading to her daughter's unresolved violent
death at the age of 24 and its aftermath.
ISBN
978-1-7345539-0-1 (print)
978-1-7345539-1-8
Story Oak Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota
Biography& Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
