"The memoir “Prayer Wasn’t Enough” is the coming-to-reality story of Dee Ready who eagerly enters a Benedictine convent in the summer of 1958 after graduation from college. Like many young women, she’s an idealist. Ready has the romantic notion that by becoming a nun, she will also become so saintly that everyone she meets will love her. This leads to a quest for perfection that quickly becomes for her, as it does for many, a stumbling block that keeps her from accepting her true self.

In this lyrical convent memoir, listeners journey with this naïve nun who is both emotionally and spiritually immature. She soon begins to consider her own will as more important than the vow of obedience she has taken.

At the same time, she continues to hold fast to her desire to pray, hoping that prayer will help quell the emotional turmoil that comes as she begins to question her own intentions. Ready’s then romantic view of what a nun should be, coupled with her inability to ask for help, become the catalyst for her leaving the convent.

In her brief Epilogue, this ex-nun expresses her gratitude for all she learned in the convent about communal life. She readily admits that those eight-and-a-half years of her twenties became foundational for who she is today.

“Prayer Wasn’t Enough” will appeal not only to those memoir listeners who are curious about what young women may discover about themselves when they enter a convent, but also to anyone who’s ever struggled for perfection and fallen short; to those who passionately embrace a committed life—be it marriage, career, social justice, or the convent; and to those among us whose dreams for the future have been shaken or derailed.