Lilies of the Field by William E. Barrett

This is the first book I remember reading as a teenager and it is the reason why I fell in love with reading. I remember completely being transported to another time and feeling as if I was right there with the characters. It was the simple and straight forward style that captivated me.

This is a story about race and faith. Homer Smith is a black ex-GI living life on the open road until he stops at a farm in Arizona and sees four women working on a fence, and later realizes they are nuns from Germany. Homer had no idea that this stop would change his life forever.

The mother superior is convinced he has been sent to them by God to help them build a new chapel. She asks him to do a small roofing repair job. He enjoys the friendliness of the nuns and decides to stay overnight. When he is done, Smith tries to get the mother superior to pay him so he can leave by quoting Luke 10:7, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." Mother Maria Marthe, asks him to read another Bible verse from the Sermon on the Mount, after all she had a bigger plan in mind for him, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”