The aim of this book is to describe the glorious adventure which St. Teresa of Jesus embarked on when she answered the call to found a reformation of the Carmelites. Through it the reader can join her on the roads of Castile, la Mancha, and Andalusia and share the pain and the glory of this new birth. ... Teresa travelled the roads, on mule-back or by wagon, building chapels and carmels. That was what she spent the last fifteen years of her life doing, and she had founded her first monastery in Avila five years earlier. She was forty-seven when she started and sixty-seven when death cut short her last journey to Alba de Tormes, just when her cherished dream of founding in Madrid seemed about to be fulfilled. She was born in Avila on 28 March 1515. ... Her journeys were confined to her own country (Spain). She never even reached the shores of the mediterranean or of the Atlantic. But her spirit roamed freely in other landscapes and was open to the whole world. She placed her hope in the universal mission of the Church on whose chessboard she was conscious that she was a minor, yet indispensable piece. (from the prologue)