The Silence of Sunday

Julia Pratt, who was raised by nuns in an orphanage, had made a good life for herself and her daughter Emilia in Lincoln, Nebraska. Through grit and gumption, she had managed to raise her daughter on her own while working her way up to manager of a Haynes Johnson supermarket branch. In addition to Emilia and her job, her other main devotion was her Catholic religion. She was the kind of Catholic who was prone to praying the rosary every time a hardship arose in her life. She had a special affinity to the icon of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of which she has a statue for her home altar, and with Father August Augustine, who was a constant presence in her life.

One day, she decided to move and chose Layton, Utah because she got a manager job for the Haynes and Johnson branch there. She pleaded with Emilia, now eighteen, to move with her. She was tired of living in Lincoln, she said, and this was going to be her life's big adventure. Emilia had just graduated from high school and had other plans, so she wasn't keen on going, but she came along anyway out of worry for her mother. She had sensed Julia's anxiousness and desperation, and even while she was excitedly explaining the reason for the move, she could tell her mother was pretending.

When they arrived in Layton, as Emilia stood on the stoop of the front door of their new house, she saw a family of six walking home from the Mormon church a few blocks away. Among them was Kyle Witten, the oldest child of Eric and Elaine, a nineteen-year-old preparing for his mission. Their attraction for each other was instant. They fell in love, putting into question Emilia's Catholic faith.

Julia was concerned that Emilia was becoming too entrenched in the lives of the Witten family. But she had more pressing matters at hand. Her troubled past was beginning to resurface and the truth of why she needed to move away would be revealed, opening old wounds, causing a rift between mother and daughter, altering their lives forever.