The brief lives of Francisco and Jacinta Marto "were as ordinary and as predictable as those of the sheep they tended. The only exceptional thing that happened to them is the reason for their fame, though not for their beatification. A year or two before their deaths, at nine and ten years old, they were visited by a young woman, who herself had died more than eighteen hundred years earlier." With these words the author introduces the beatified seers of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. Never before have the lives of these children been examined in such detail, and with such refreshing insight. Read how an angel prepared these simple peasant children to welcome the Mother of God, and how their encounters with Our Lady changed their lives forever, and the lives of legions of the faithful. Book jacket.