Marie shows the silk-spinning nuns how to catch worms to fish for trout and teaches the field nuns how to find edible mushrooms. The novel gives Groff the opportunity to celebrate and hypothesize about the life of her "beloved Marie de France", an actual medieval writer who was France's first female poet. One secret to Marie's success: instead of assigning nuns to jobs they hate as a form of penance, Marie puts them to work in jobs they are good at.