I leap over the wall

Plot

The year was 1914 and Monica Baldwin was 17 when she took the veil of a Roman Catholic religious order and vanished behind convent walls. Ten years later she began to think she had made a mistake. Nevertheless, for 18 years more of inward strain and stress she lived the life of the convent.At last, after 28 years in an enclosed convent, she asked for release, convinced that she "was no more fitted to be a nun than to be an acrobat." Rescript was granted by Rome, and in 1941, when she was 45, Monica Baldwin "had leapt over the wall." She landed hard in a world full of new, sharp angles, and this is her story.