FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
“A lovely, heartfelt tale. Get thee to a bookstore and buy it.”
—A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically
“[Jane Christmas’s] style is equal parts Nora Ephron and Bill Bryson.”
—Quill and Quire
“I don’t want to give the impression that I am one of those nut jobs who listens to the voices in her head, but in all honesty I am someone who listens to the voices in her head.”
—from And Then There Were Nuns
When Jane Christmas’s long-term boyfriend proposed marriage on Christmas vacation, she answered him by sharing her deepest desire since she was a teenage girl: She wanted to “consider” becoming a nun. With her fiancé’s patient blessing, she put her engagement on the back burner and embarked on a year-long adventure. By living full time among nuns and monks, she hoped to finally decide whether she could actually transform her life and dedicate herself to God—or to her family and shoe collection. Was she really “nun-material”?
With humor and charming insight, Jane relates her experiences in a new book AND THEN THERE WERE NUNS: Adventures in a Cloistered Life (Greystone Books; October 2013; $17.95). In the book, Jane provides a glimpse into the seldom seen and less understood life of modern-day convents. In both Anglican and Catholic convents located in Canada and the United Kingdom, Jane learns that being a nun has its ups and downs, and makes surprising findings along the way, such as that nuns “love AC/DC and Def Leppard, too” and compares praying to “the hardest job you could do…and then imagine doing that in silence and in a dress.”
Always a journalist in AND THEN THERE WERE NUNS, Jane discusses her observations on how there are many women who choose to devote their lives to faith later in life; what the role of women in the church has grown to be; the history of Christianity; and how she perceives humanity’s overall views of God.
AND THEN THERE WERE NUNS is a hilarious, moving journey of love, spirituality, and discovery that shows there are so many layers of meaning in life. They are there for the taking, if you are willing to look at them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jane Christmas is the bestselling author of Incontinent on the Continent, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim, and The Pelee Project. She lives in London, England.