In an important feminist study, Rosa Bruno-Jofré offers a sensitive and nuanced picture of how a women's organization, the Missionary Oblate Sisters, a bilingual teaching congregation in Manitoba, dealt with both the larger patriarchal structures and the differing views, traditions, and attitudes of Sisters from disparate French Canadian communities in Manitoba, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and the United States.

Bruno-Jofré draws extensively from private archives and oral histories to bring to light the inner life of the congregation and their educational work. She demonstrates that the Sisters played an important role in building a French Canadian identity in Manitoba and Quebec and provides a glimpse into their complex relationship with the Oblate Fathers including their role as auxiliaries in the residential schools.

The book concludes with an analysis of the efforts of the Congregation since 1973 to reformulate its vision and mission within the framework of Vatican II and the desire "to live" as a community that motivated the sisters to revisit their memories and their interpretation of the past.