The mermaid chair / Kidd, Sue Monk

Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to tiny Egret Island, where she meets Brother Thomas, a monk who is about to take his final vows, and encounters the legend of a mysterious chair dedicated to a saint who had originally been a mermaid.

Forty-two-year-old Jessie is summoned home to Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina after her obsessively devout mother inexplicably cuts off her own finger, and finds herself oddly exhilarated to be free of her husband, and wildly attracted to Brother Thomas, a monk who has yet to take his final vows.