Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin & is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition such a claim to blessedness has serious consequences especially when Catalina seems more inclined to obey her heart than the demands of the Church. The last of Maugham's novels Catalina is a romantic celebration of Spain & a delightfully mischievous satire on absolutism.