Relic of His Heart

A midwife has a chance to right a seventy-year-old wrong.

Tessa delivers babies at night and raises five sons by day. When an angel appears after a birth and asks for help on a quest, her first response is, "Angels don't even exist," followed by a swift, "No."

Even after he proves he exists (and lets her call him Martin) she wants nothing to do with his quest: Martin wants to find a relic stolen at the end of World War II, when the town of Barlassina was torched and its church destroyed. The relic went into the pocket of a long-dead soldier and hasn't been seen since.

Without the relic, the church won't be rebuilt; without the church, Barlassina will die. It's been gone for eight decades, but Martin senses the relic is about to be "birthed back into time." He wants Tessa there when it happens. There's only one chance to make it right, and he's desperate.

Tessa's family comes from that town, but really? Still no.

When a bill threatens to end midwifery in Massachusetts, Tessa offers Martin a deal: she'll hunt for the relic if he'll help kill that legislation. An unlikely team, they start sifting through the past and the present, the lives of soldiers and the deaths of innocents, guilty consciences and a few consciences that aren't nearly guilty enough.

The further they delve into the mystery, though, the more obvious it becomes that there's more to Martin's story. And the key to uncovering the relic may lie in whatever it is he's trying to keep hidden.

Jane Lebak writes novels about angels, smart women, and smart women dealing with angels. Relic of His Heart has all three in spades, in a rousing triumph of love, persistence, and the many ways the present encounters the past.