After Christina breaks the Fifth Commandment, strange things begin to happen — and take her away from home in Normal, Illinois.

Now, she's back and has to tell them the story within a story, but how can she make them believe? So she had made a mistake — but didn't all teenagers do the same thing?

The Fifth Commandment is a supernatural memoir entwined with a plot drenching with old-fashioned religious guilt, and short enough to finish in a single sitting — perhaps lounging by the pool or sitting in the garden. The novella follows Christina into a confessional and starts at what we would consider our weakest point.

The point when we first admit our sin.

Penniless Hearts