A biography documenting the extraordinary life of Elizaveta Pilenko (Mother Mary). She was a radical Russian Orthodox nun who abandoned the comforts of life to serve the poor and outcasts until her martyrdom in a Nazi concentration camp. This book traces Mother Mary's journey from her childhood in an aristocratic Russian family to her rise to prominence as a poet and intellectual. Facing the hardships of life, two marriages, and exile resulting from the Russian Revolution, she ultimately discovered an unusual spiritual calling. Unlike most nuns who secluded themselves in convents, she instead made the outside world her 'monastery'. In Paris during the Nazi occupation, she founded a shelter that served the homeless, alcoholics, and the desperate. When World War II broke out, she and her colleagues actively hid and helped Jews in Paris avoid deportation by the Nazi regime. This humanitarian work eventually led to her arrest by the Gestapo and her transfer to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. There, she died a martyr in 1945, reportedly taking the place of another prisoner in the gas chamber. This book by Sergei Hackel is considered very important in introducing the figure of Mother Mary to the world, which ultimately led to her canonization (proclamation as a saint) by the Orthodox Church in 2004.