Sister Ephrem Hollermann recently published a new book titled Like a Mustard Seed: A History of the First Benedictine Women’s Monastery in North America. It is available for purchase in Whitby Gift Shop at Saint Benedict's Monastery's Art and Heritage Place or online.
S. Ephrem provided a short description of the book and her experience writing it: "Like a Mustard Seed: A History of the First Benedictine Women’s Monastery in North America traces the history of the Benedictine community from which Saint Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minn., was founded in 1857—just five years after three nuns from Eichstätt, Bavaria, crossed a perilous ocean to begin Benedictine life among women in St. Marys, Penn. It was my great privilege to be commissioned to write this history by the Federation of St. Scholastica. It was a blessed opportunity for me to further my conviction that the full story of American Catholicism will not be known until the stories of women religious have been lifted out of the shadows of mainstream history into their rightful place as stalwart shapers of an American Catholic identity and ethos.”