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RELIGIOUS OVERTONES IN THE SAINT’S MISTRESS

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One of my readers recently questioned me about the religious overtones in my book.  As I indicated in my post about how I handled Christian conversion, this was an aspect of the book that I really struggled with.

I’m a Christian, but I didn’t write the book to evangelize for Christianity.  I wrote it to tell a story that I thought was interesting.

Of course, when you’re writing about Saint Augustine, there is no avoiding the topic of religion!  And one of the things that made me want to tell this story was that it takes place in at an interesting period in Church history, and one that is little-explored in fiction:  that turning point right after Christianity became the state religion, when the early Church was establishing orthodoxy and still battling the last vestiges of paganism, that hinge between the ancient and medieval worlds.

I took Augustine at his word in portraying his spiritual journey.  He well described in the Confessions how he was entranced first by the pagan philosophers, then by Manicheism, then by neo-Platonism, before accepting Christianity.  I portray him as a young man of enthusiasms, a passionate seeker of truth, who is ultimately made the great leader he longed to be only when he attaches himself to something larger than himself.  I’ll put it out there:  my position, as a Christian, is that God made use of him.  But you could also read my portrayal of him as a man who came into his own as he matured and subsumed his ego in a larger cause.  Again, I was not trying to evangelize.  I was trying to portray my character in a way that was true to my understanding of him.

I could take Leona in any direction I wanted, since she left no record of herself.  And, as with Augustine, I tried to write her true to how I imagined her.

Inevitably, though, my Christian bias probably comes through, and I don’t apologize for that.  One of the things I’m interested in doing in my writing is to explore questions of faith.  There are plenty of books that portray Christianity in a cynical light.  And there is plenty of Christian fiction that portrays Christianity completely uncritically:  Jesus fixes everything, The End. I plan a future post on my objections to Christian fiction.  What I try to do is write from the questions, not from either cynical or uncritical answers.

Christianity and Climate Change

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Christians tend to get a bad rap for being anti-science – and, sadly, that bad rap is often justified.  As a Christian who is very concerned about climate change (Helloooooo…. right in Genesis it says God created this world and pronounced it good, so we are seriously going to just trash it?!), Katharine Hayhoe is now my official hero: Climate change hero

Here’s a link to her book on Goodreads: Climate for Change

Why I Wrote The Saint’s Mistress part two

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Part two of a story wherein a very amateur writer who is already too busy feels compelled to write a novel about Saint Augustine and his mistress…. I had an opening scene in a pear orchard, based on an experience Augustine describes in the Confessions, and I had an irrational passion to tell this ghost-woman’s story.  I borrowed more books from the library, and stayed up late doing internet research.  In our crowded household, there was no quiet place to write, so I got up at 5 a.m., was in Bruegger’s or Au Bon Pain with my laptop the minute they opened, and wrote for an hour in coffee shops before work.  Every day.  For two years. I did eventually tackle the Confessions, and had to read it twice to understand it.  My husband and I travelled to Milan, where Augustine and Leona lived for several years, and to Ostia, where his mother, Saint Monnica, died. Then came a year of editing, rewriting, and harsh-but-loving criticism from my two beloved writing groups.  Whole chapters that led nowhere were slashed.  Hundreds of dead-weight adverbs and adjectives lost their lives.  Confusing names were changed.  Characters disappeared. And that was easy compared to the five years that it took to find an agent or publisher.  Try being a first-time novelist with zero contacts, trying to sell a novel in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and while the publishing industry is in the process of the biggest transformation since the printing press.  Or, on second thought, don’t try it.  It isn’t fun. But, my complaints are lies in a sense, because I actually loved doing all of the above.  With every day that passed, both Saint Augustine, whom the world knows, and Leona, a mere ghost, felt more and more real to me.  Sometimes I forgot that I was making it all up, and felt like I was telling the story the way I knew, absolutely knew somehow, that it had really happened.  I loved them.  I still do. A trail of books led me to them, and I hope that my own finished book accurately expresses their time, their love and their spirits.

Why I wrote The Saint’s Mistress (part one)

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Why I wrote The Saint’s Mistress (part one)

I came to write The Saint’s Mistress via a trail of books.

At the library one April night in 2006, a book called The Well-Educated Mind caught my eye.  The Well-Educated Mind recommended Saint Augustine’s Confessions as the first example of a modern autobiography.  I was intrigued by that, but a little daunted by the prospect of a book written in the 5th century by an early Father of the Church.

A few months later, again at the library, I happened to notice a short biography of Augustine by Garry Wills.  I remembered my interest in the Confessions and thought this short, modern book might be a way to ease myself into Augustine.  It was in the Wills book that I discovered Leona – or, more accurately, the faint, ancient scent of her.

Wills wrote a little of Augustine’s beloved, whom he mentions briefly, but never names, in his Confessions.  I learned that this unnamed woman had been Augustine’s mistress of many years, and that they had had a child together who died as a young man.  Wow, I thought, what must her life have been like?  Then:  Hmmmm, what WOULD it have been like?  And so a flame was lit.

The wonderful thing about Leona is that nothing was known of her, other than what little I learned from Wills.  She was Augustine’s mistress.  They are believed to have met in Carthage.  They had a son.  The son died.  After that, history is absolutely silent.  I could make up anything I wanted, including her name.  My only constraints were the historically established facts of Augustine’s life and 4th-5th century Christianity.

I was an amateur, sporadically published, writer of short stories, travel articles and essays.  I had finished one novel that I wasn’t quite satisfied with and had no idea how to submit for publication anyway.  I had no experience with historical research.  My life also included a demanding full-time job, a husband, a son in college, and a daughter and baby grandson who had just moved back in with us.  So, of course, I had to write this book….TO BE CONTINUED

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I just found out that another novel about Augustine’s mistress was written about 20 years ago.  I can hardly wait to read it!  Here is a link to it on Goodreads: Vita Brevis.

But read mine first!