title: The Young Madonna
author: Wood, Lynn
description: Aspiring artist, Mary Elle McGann has a haunting encounter with the child virgin and is suddenly propelled to the dizzying heights atop the glittering international art scene where she meets Luc Bordeaux, a wealthy Parisian collector. After a fairytale weekend in Paris, Mary Elle returns to the states to pick up the pieces of her former non-glittery life only to realize that some doors once opened are not so easily shut again. The virgin returns, but this time as a young woman on the brink of changing the course of history. Trying to gain a step on the bizarre turn her life has taken, Mary Elle travels to Nazareth and then Bethlehem following the footsteps of the girl who would become the mother of Christ. But the virgin is not the only one pursuing her and with each step she takes in the direction of her destiny, another hand offers Mary Elle a different vision…one born of passion, fame, wealth and love. Can she risk reaching for both the virgin’s gifts and the heady excitement she finds with Luc or will their competing designs for her future tear her apart? Can she be the star in her own Cinderella story or in the very moment she takes Luc’s hand will she forfeit the singular gift that attracted him to her in the first place? A compelling story of fate, of a faith tested and honed in the agonies of indecision, and of the yearning for the fairy tale ending ever woman dreams of…both today…and 2000 years ago…