Drawing from her many years of experience as a hospice nurse and her training as a theologian, Patricia Kobielus Thompson offers in "The Dark Night of the Soul" instruction to those providing care for terminally ill patients. Thompson finds in the poetry and other writings of Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross a wisdom that she argues will assist caregivers in comforting their patients through the trying times just before death. Though much has been written on Saint John of the Cross, Thompson's application of these works is wholly new and rooted in deep empathy.