THE SISTERS HAD BEEN THE residents of a tall stone convent where there was a boarding school for girls for nearly three hundred years. The spires reached to heaven. The gravel paths were worn down from those who walked there daily as they recited their prayers. In the woods near the convent, Ava could hear the rise and fall of voices from inside. The nuns at prayer, the students at the dinner table, and then, the faintest voices of all, five Jewish girls in the attic who were well cared for, but who still wept at night, longing for their mothers. More and more children had been separated from their parents when the Vichy government decided to arrest Jews, except for children under the age of sixteen. Many of these children, who were now on their own, were living in châteaus and schools run by the OSE, who turned to convents such as this, and to the homes of those good neighbors who believed a child’s life was worth more than adhering to arbitrary laws.

The sisters had originally been lacemakers, but during the Reign of Terror many were beheaded by guillotine or thrown into prison. For the next twenty years they were in hiding, until they could at last be free to live and work as their faith decreed. During the Revolution, when they would not sign documents stating their first allegiance was to France, rather than to God, the congregation was outlawed until 1807. The sisters understood what it was to be persecuted and arrested and murdered, for a crime no worse than faith.

The convent and its grounds were elegant and lush, thanks to several wealthy women who, over the convent’s long history, had joined the order and brought their wealth with them. In their legendary garden grew roses of every color: rouge; noire; blanche; feu, the color of fire; cerise, the shade of cherries; argent, silver; and or, gold. Some varieties had first names and surnames, as though they were elegant women shrouded in vivid color standing between the hedges in silk dresses: Madame Isaac Pereire, created in 1881, Madame Ernest Calvat, first grown in 1888, Bourbon Roses and tea roses of every hue and tone, all grown by the grace of God.

The mother superior, Sister Marie, had grown up in a château outside Paris and recalled the bliss of the garden of her childhood. She’d been delighted to come to the convent as a young woman to find the leggy, half-remembered, and utterly neglected planting of roses. From the start, she vowed to bring the garden back to its former glory. Her first act as mother superior was to hire a landscaper who would teach the sisters to garden.