The genesis of my novel, Brigid’s Peace, which I began in the spring of 2013 coinciding with my studies in the Presidential Seminar, was an interest in examining the need for luminosity, for transcendence, for beauty in the face of dark despair and evil. My work centers on the story of an Irish Catholic family living in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the time of sectarian conflict known as “the troubles,” but more specifically on the impact of events related to that time on one young woman, Brigid Donegan, an artist and one of seven sisters. Through a close, third person point of view, I examine how the creative process offers a place of reconciliation of seemingly irreconcilable opposites as well as a vehicle for forgiveness of self and others.