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Anne Rice

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession Hardcover – Bargain Price, October 7, 2008

by Anne Rice (Author)

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In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith.

Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana followed.

And now, in her powerful and haunting memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in her literary goals.

She begins with her girlhood in New Orleans as the devout child in a deeply religious Irish Catholic family. She describes how, as she grew up, she lost her belief in God, but not her desire for a meaningful life.

She writes about her years in radical Berkeley, where her career as a novelist began with the publication of Interview with the Vampire, soon to be followed by more novels about otherworldly beings, about the realms of good and evil, love and alienation, pageantry and ritual, each reflecting aspects of her often agonizing moral quest.

She writes about loss and tragedy (her mother’s drinking; the death of her daughter and, later, her beloved husband, Stan Rice); about new joys; about the birth of her son, Christopher; about the family’s return in 1988 to the city of New Orleans, the city that inspired so much of her work. She tells how after an adult lifetime of questioning, she experienced the intense conversion and consecration to Christ that lie behind her most recent novels.

For her readers old and new, this book explores her continuing interior pilgrimage.

Print length

245 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Knopf
Publication date

October 7, 2008
Dimensions

5.85 x 1 x 8.65 inches
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Anne Rice stopped crafting stories about vampires and began writing about Jesus, many of her fans were shocked. This autobiographical spiritual memoir provides an account of how the author rediscovered and fully embraced her Catholic faith after decades as a self-proclaimed atheist. Rice begins with her childhood in New Orleans, when she seriously considered entering a convent. As she grows into a young adult she delves into concerns about faith, God and the Catholic Church that lead her away from religion. The author finally reclaims her Catholic faith in the late 1990s, describing it as a movement toward total surrender to God. She writes beautifully about how through clouds of doubt and pain she finds clarity, realizing how much she loved God and desired to surrender her being, including her writing talent, to God. Covering such a large sequence of time and life events is not easy, and some of the author's transitions are a bit jarring. Fans of Rice's earlier works will enjoy discovering more about her life and fascinating journey of faith. (Oct. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Rice gave faithful fans fits when she concluded her lengthy vampire saga with series hero Lestat searching for sainthood and followed up with carefully orthodox biographical novels about Jesus. Now she eloquently explains the life change that shaped those books: her return to Catholicism. First, however, she limns the early-life faith she hoped to resume and the long exile from it that began, so typically, in college and continued until late middle age. She expansively recalls the cohesion and beauty that regular mass attendance, Catholic schooling, and community observance of the panoply of Christian festivals bestowed on her New Orleans childhood and adolescence. Much more tersely but no less consequentially, she asserts the satisfaction of her thoroughly faithful 41-year marriage to the poet Stan Rice (1942–2002). About her long period of unbelief, she is even briefer, though she retrospectively interprets her vampires and witches as sad unbelievers still desperately striving for transcendence and grace, as she was. Coming home to New Orleans in 1989 preceded coming home to the church in 1996, and full realization of revived faith came with the decision to write for God. As plainly written as a Quaker spiritual journal, Rice’s confession of faith will impress many who wouldn’t think of reading vampire romances—and possibly many who read little else. --Ray Olson

Review

“[A] very affecting story of a well-known prodigal’s return. . . . Called Out of Darkness is the vivid, engaging tale of the journey of a soul into light.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Rice couples her writing talents with the zeal of a recent convert.” —Christianity Today

“Rice could rival C.S. Lewis as a popular apologist for the faith.” —Time

“Rice’s memoir shows what true belief really involves. It exacts a price. James Agee had a lovely term for this. He called it ‘cruel radiance.’” —Los Angeles Times

“Anne Rice is not a convert but a revert. . . . A loving reconstruction of the pre–Vatican II Church of the 1940s and 1950s. . . . [After] twenty-five years and twenty-one books . . . Rice entrusts both herself and the people she loves to God.” —First Things

“Called Out of Darkness is rich in both poetic simplicity and liberating confessionals. This memoir is not to be missed.” —East Bay Literary Examiner

“I am not a Christian and I normally don’t read what I would call Christian books. They don’t appeal to me, they don’t interest me and I normally pass them by in the bookstore. . . . [But] I picked up [Called Out of Darkness] up this afternoon and it’s beyond wonderful.” —Jamieson Wolf

“As a long-time reader of Anne Rice’s, the impetus she presents here makes me want to re-read many of her prior works. I highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks the inspiration and motivation behind the bestselling novels they’ve read.”—BookReporter.com

“Nothing short of magnificent. . . . What a real blessing, what a vulnerable sharing.” —Flos Carmeli

“A lovely, intelligent book.” —PopMatters

“Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a religious person—even if you are not a Christian—read this book. Anyone can appreciate the message contained in Called Out of Darkness. . . . It is a thinking person’s approach to faith.” —Edge (Provincetown, MA)

From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Anne Rice is the author of twenty-eight books. She lives in Rancho Mirage, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

This book is about faith in God.

For more than twenty centuries, Christianity has given us dazzling works of theology, yet it remains a religion in which the heart is absolutely essential to faith.

The appeal of Jesus Christ was first and foremost to the heart.

The man knocked on his back on the Road to Damascus experienced a transformation of the heart. St. Francis of Assisi, giving away all of his clothes as he turned to follow Christ, was reflecting a decision of the heart. Mother Teresa founded her world-famous order of nuns because of a decision of the heart.

The immensity of these figures finds an imperfect student in me, but not an inattentive one.

I want to tell, as simply as I can—and nothing with me as a writer has ever really been simple—the story of how I made my decision of the heart.

So here is the story of one path to God.

The story has a happy ending because I have found the Transcendent God both intellectually and emotionally. And complete belief in Him and devotion to Him, no matter how interwoven with occasional fear and constant personal failure and imperfection, has become the true story of my life.

If this path to God is an illusion, then the story is worthless. If the path is real, then we have something here that may matter to you as well as to me.

2

Before I can describe how I returned to faith, at the age of fifty-seven, I want to describe how I learned about God as a child.

What strikes me now as most important about this experience is that it preceded reading books. Christians are People of the Book, and our religion is often described as a Religion of the Book. And for two thousand years, all that we believe has been handed down in texts.

But no doubt many children learned about God as I did—from my mother and from the experience of church which had little or nothing directly to do with knowing how to read.

Over the years, I turned out to be a consistently poor reader, and I don’t think I ever read a novel for pleasure until I was in the sixth grade. Even in my college years, I was a poor reader and, in fact, couldn’t major in English because I could not read the amounts of Chaucer or Shakespeare assigned in the classes. I graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in political science, principally because I could understand the historic background I received for political ideas through good lectures.

I was twenty-seven before I began to make up an undergraduate degree in English, and thirty-one before I received a master’s in English. Even then I read so slowly and poorly that I took my master’s orals on three authors, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway, without having read all of their works. I couldn’t possibly read all of their works.

The reason I’m emphasizing this is because I believe that what we learn through reading is essentially different from what we learn in other ways. And my concept of God came through the spoken words of my mother, and also the intensely beautiful experiences I had in church.

It’s important to stress here that my earliest experiences involved beauty; my strongest memories are of beautiful things I saw, things which evoked such profound feeling in me that I often felt pain.

In fact I remember my early childhood as full of beauty, and no ugly moment from that time has any reality for me. The beauty is the song of those days.

I vividly remember knowing about God, that He loved us, made us, took care of us, that we belonged to Him; and I remember loving Jesus as God; and praying to Him and to His Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, when I was very small.

I can’t really associate any one image with Jesus because there were so many around me, from small highly sentimental holy pictures, which we treasured at home, to magnificent images of Jesus in St. Alphonsus Church.

I’ll describe the church in a minute, as it takes considerable describing, but first I want to mention a small place where we went often to pray. This was the Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help on Third and Prytania streets, a consecrated Catholic chapel with a tabernacle and an altar, in which Mass was celebrated every day. The chapel was a huge room inside an old Garden District mansion, set in spacious gardens, that was also a high school.

My mother had graduated from this high school many years before, and I recall going to a garden party on the grounds when I was a little child. The building itself was impressive, with a central doorway, floor-length windows on the front and on both sides, and colonnettes along the front porch that held up the porch above.

Much later in life—during the 1990s—when I was a well-known author, I actually bought this building, as it had tremendous meaning for me. Not only had my mother gone to school there, but my aunts and cousins had gone to school there as well. Some cousins had been married in the chapel. And my strongest religious memories were centered on this place. The story of that purchase and what it meant requires a book, and indeed I wrote a novel using the building as a key backdrop, but that is not my concern just now.

This is what it was like in the 1940s to go to the Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

We left our house at St. Charles and Philip, and walked up the avenue, under the oaks, and almost always to the slow roar of the passing streetcars, and rumble of traffic, then crossed over into the Garden District, a very special neighborhood filled with immense Greek Revival–style homes, many of which had been built before the Civil War. This was an immediate plunge into a form of quiet, because though traffic did move steadily on Prytania Street, it was nothing as loud as the traffic of the avenue. The oaks were bigger and more ancient, and the enormous houses with their Corinthian or Doric columns were monuments in themselves. Everywhere there were flowers. Purple lantana and ice blue plumbago burst through the pickets of black iron fences, and beyond in the more groomed gardens grew the flowers I associated with rich people: multi-petaled camellias and gorgeously defined roses in black beds. It was fine to pick the soft fragrant lantana, and the bunches of plumbago. The finer flowers one left alone.

It was often evening when we made this short walk, and I remember the pavements as clearly as I remember the cicadas singing in the trees. The pavements varied; some were herringbone brick, very dark, uneven, and often trimmed in velvet green moss. Other sidewalks were purple flagstone, just like the purple flagstones of our own front yard. Even the rare stretches of raw cement were interesting because the cement had broken and buckled in so many places over the roots of the giant magnolias and the oaks.

The walk was two and a half blocks.

The chapel stood behind a high black picket fence with its gate permanently open, and a short flight of white marble steps led up to the white marble porch. I don’t recall the chapel ever being locked.

The sky during these trips was often bloodred, or purple, and the trees were so thick that one could only see hundreds of fragments of the sky amid clusters of darkening leaves. The color of the sky seemed to me to be connected with the song of the cicadas, and the drowsy shadows playing everywhere on the margins of what was visible, and the distinct feel of the humid air. Even in winter the air was moist, so that the world itself seemed to be pulsing around us, enfolding us, holding us as we moved through it.

The chapel had an immense and ornate doorway.

Immediately on entering, one smelled the wax of the flickering candles, and the lingering incense from the Tuesday night benediction service and from the daily or Sun- day Mass.

These fragrances were associated in my mind with the utter quiet of the chapel, the glow of the candlelight, and the faces of the tall plaster saints that surrounded us as we moved up the aisle.

We went right past the many rows of dark wooden pews on either side, up to the Communion railing, which I think was white marble, and there we knelt on the leather-cushioned step as we said our prayers. We laid down there the flowers we’d picked on our walk. I think my mother told us that Mr. Charlie, who took care of the chapel, would put these flowers in some proper place.

The great altar against the back wall, just beyond us, was a masterpiece of white and gilt plasterwork, and the altar proper, the place where Mass was said, was always covered with an ornate lace-bordered white cloth.

In a long horizontal glass case in the lower body of the altar, there sat a long series of small plaster statues around a table making up the Last Supper, with Our Lord in the center, and six Apostles on either side. I knew this was Jesus there at the table, facing us. And in later years, I came to realize the figures were arranged in imitation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. It was detailed and artful and complete.

The Body and Blood of Jesus were in the golden tabernacle on the altar above. This was the Blessed Sacrament. A candle burning in a red glass lamp nearby told us that the Blessed Sacrament was there. This was called the sanctuary light.

On account of this Presence of Our Lord in the chapel, we moved with reverence, whispering if we had to speak, and kneeling as was proper. This chapel required all the same respect as any large Catholic church.

I remember the gold tabernacle had a concave front, and carved doors. The tabernacle was set in a lavish plaster edifice that included small white columns, but the details are now gone from my mind.

We said our prayers as we knelt there. We paid our “visit.” And we left as quietly as we had come.

I don’t remember being particularly puzzled by these truths, that Our Lord was in the tabernacle, in the form of bread, which was in fact His Body and Blood. I just remember ...

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002U0KO18
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf (October 7, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 245 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.85 x 1 x 8.65 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,425,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Anne Rice

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Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. Anne has spent more of her life in California than in New Orleans, but New Orleans is her true home and provides the back drop for many of her famous novels. The French Quarter provided the setting for her first novel, Interview with the Vampire. And her ante-bellum house in the Garden District was the fictional home of her imaginary Mayfair Witches.

She is the author of over 30 books, most recently the Toby O'Dare novels Of Love and Evil, and Angel Time; the memoir, Called Out of Darkness;and her two novels about Jesus, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. (Anne regards Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana as her best novel.) ---- Under the pen name, A.N. Roquelaure, Anne is the author of the erotic (BDSM) fantasy series, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. Under the pen name Anne Rampling she is the author of two erotic novels, Exit to Eden and Belinda.

Anne publicly broke with organized religion in July of 2010 on moral grounds, affirming her faith in God, but refusing any longer to be called "Christian." The story attracted surprising media attention, with Rice's remarks being quoted in stories all over the world. Anne hopes that her two novels about Jesus will be accepted on their merits by readers and transcend her personal difficulties with religion. "Both my Christ the Lord novels were written with deep conviction and a desire to write the best novels possible about Jesus that were rooted in the bible and in the Christian tradition. I think they are among the best books I've ever been able to write, and I do dream of a day when they are evaluated without any connection to me personally. I continue to get a lot of very favorable feedback on them from believers and non believers. I remain very proud of them."

Anne is very active on her FaceBook Fan Page and has well over a million followers. She answers questions every day on the page, and also posts on a variety of topics, including literature, film, music, politics, religion, and her own writings. Many indie authors follow the page, and Anne welcomes posts that include advice for indie authors. She welcomes discussion there on numerous topics. She frequently asks her readers questions about their response to her work and joins in the discussions prompted by these questions.

Her novel, "The Wolves of Midwinter," a sequel to "The Wolf Gift" and part of a werewolf series set in Northern California in the present time, will be published on October 15, 2013. In these books --- The Wolf Gift Chronicles -- Anne returns to the classic monsters and themes of supernatural literature, similar to those she explored in her Vampire Chronicles, and tales of the Mayfair Witches. Her new "man wolf" hero, Reuben Golding, is a talented young man in his twenties who suddenly discovers himself in possession of werewolf powers that catapult him into the life of a comic book style super hero. How Reuben learns to control what he is, how he discovers others who possess the same mysterious "wolf gift," and how he learns to live with what he has become --- is the main focus of the series. "The Wolves of Midwinter" is a big Christmas book --- a book about Christmas traditions, customs, and the old haunting rituals of Midwinter practiced in Europe and in America. It's about how the werewolves celebrate these rituals, as humans and as werewolves. But the book also carries forward the story of Reuben's interactions with his girl friend, Laura, and with his human family, with particular focus on Reuben's father, Phil, and his brother, Jim. As a big family novel with elements of the supernatural, "The Wolves of Midwinter" has much in common with Anne's earlier book, "The Witching Hour." Among the treats of "The Wolves of Midwinter" is a tragic ghost who appears in the great house at Nideck Point, and other "ageless ones" who add their mystery and history to the unfolding revelations that at times overwhelm Reuben.

In October of 2014, with the publication of "Prince Lestat," Anne returned to the fabled "Brat Prince" of the Vampire Chronicles, catching up with him in present time. This is the first of several books planned focusing on Lestat's new adventures with other members of the Vampire tribe. When the publication of "Prince Lestat" was announced on Christopher Rice's "The Dinner Party Show," a weekly internet radio broadcast, it made headlines in the US and around the world. "Prince Lestat" debuted at #3 on the New York Times Best Seller list and ran for nine weeks during the height of the competitive Fall-Winter season, with another week on the extended NYTBSL. ----

"Beauty's Kingdom," is the fourth in her "Sleeping Beauty Erotica Series," and the first to be launched in hardcover. Though the first three novels were published in the 1980's under the pseudonym, A.N. Roquelaure, the name, Anne Rice, was added to the series in the 1990's. About her erotica, Anne has this to say: "I believe in the erotic imagination. I believe men and women have a right to write and read erotic fantasies. My goal with the "Sleeping Beauty" books is to provide the most authentic erotica that I can for those who share BDSM fantasies."

"Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis" was published on November 29th, 2016 revealing a new adventure in the life of the Brat Prince of the vampires, and the entire tribe --- as they confront the most difficult challenge they've ever faced. This novel may introduce Lestat and extend his appeal to science fiction readers and fantasy readers who love differing versions of the lost kingdom of Atlantis. The novel does justice to both themes: Atlantis and Lestat. So far, as of early 2016, this novel has received a remarkably positive response with Amazon reviewers.

Anne's first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976 and has gone on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She continued her saga of the Vampire Lestat in a series of books, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, which have had both great mainstream and cult followings.

Interview with the Vampire was made into a motion picture in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas. The film became an international success. Anne's novel, Feast of All Saints about the free people of color of ante-bellum New Orleans became a Showtime mini series in 2001 and is available now on dvd. The script for the mini series by John Wilder was a faithful adaptation of the novel.

Near the end of 2016, the theatrical rights to the Vampire Chronicles reverted fully and completely to Anne. She and her son, Christopher Rice, are now developing outlines and scripts for a new television series based on the adventures of The Vampire Lestat. Anne's announcement of this on FB reached well over 2 million people. "The reception in the Hollywood community" has been very simply wonderful," says Anne. "We have high hopes that we will see the Lestat television series go into production before the end of 2017."

Anne Rice is also the author of other novels, including The Witching Hour, Servant of the Bones, Merrick, Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle, Violin, and Cry to Heaven. She lives in Palm Desert, California, but misses her home in New Orleans. She hopes to obtain a pied a terre in the French Quarter there some time in the near future.

Anne has this to say of her work: "I have always written about outsiders, about outcasts, about those whom others tend to shun or persecute. And it does seem that I write a lot about their interaction with others like them and their struggle to find some community of their own. The supernatural novel is my favorite way of talking about my reality. I see vampires and witches and ghosts as metaphors for the outsider in each of us, the predator in each of us...the lonely one who must grapple day in and day out with cosmic uncertainty."

------

Anne's announcement of the Vampire Chronicles series as it appeared on FB.

"The theatrical rights to the Vampire Chronicles are once again in my hands, free and clear! I could not be more excited about this! --- A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe. In this the new Golden Age of television, such a series is THE way to let the entire story of the vampires unfold. --- My son Christopher Rice and I will be developing a pilot script and a detailed outline for an open ended series, faithfully presenting Lestat’s story as it is told in the books, complete with the many situations that readers expect to see. We will likely begin with “The Vampire Lestat” and move on from there. ----- When we sit down finally to talk to producers, we will have a fully realized vision of this project with Christopher as the executive producer at the helm. I will also be an executive producer all the way. ---- Again, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to be able to announce this. ---- As many of you know, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment had optioned the series to develop motion pictures from it, and though we had the pleasure of working with many fine people in connection with this plan, it did not work out. It is, more than ever, abundantly clear that television is where the vampires belong. ---- Over the years you all have told me how much you want to see a “Game of Thrones” style faithful rendering of this material, and how much you want for the series to remain in my control. Well, I have heard you. I have always heard you. What you want is what I want. --- You, the readers, made these books a success before any movie was ever made based on them, and I will never forget that fact. ---- Christopher and I will be posting many questions on the page for your input in the days to come. ----- I am filled with optimism this morning about the future for my beloved Brat Prince. What better way to start a tour for the new book!"

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Judith Martin

Confessions

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

I heartily recommend that regardless of where you stand on your appreciation of Anne's writings about her faith, that you take the time to read The Joy of Y'at Catholicism by Earl J. Higgins (Pelican, 2007). On page 14 is brief summary of an essay that Anne wrote for Time magazine. "New Orleans author Anne Rice, writer of vampire novels, tells of how she left New Orleans and Catholicism but felt the compelling need to return to both. She explains that being in New Orleans, living again in the city where she was raised, made her feel love for place, family, and God."

PLACE: I am reminded of a line from the song "The Circle of Life" from Disney's "The Lion King", which reads "...til we find our place on the path unwinding..." In old New Orleans, before the Civil Rights Era, the idea of place was that you were put in the equivalent of a strait jacket once you grew up and went to work. Your education, your skills, and (sadly) your race defined your place as well. I get the impression from Anne that she is content to have the comfort of her Garden District/Uptown neighborhood around her. Still, I have a sense that she seeks to encourage others to look beyond the old strait jacket, and keep New Orleans ever growing, ever changing, ever astonishing the rest of the world (the rest of the world that does not expect anything much from New Orleans).

FAMILY: In reading Anne's novels, and this equivalent of "The Confessions of St. Augustine", it has become clear to me that to her, even if all else is falling apart around you, the family is what you cling to. New Orleans is an extended family. You know when you arrive here that you have come home.

GOD: In her novels, Anne struggles over and over with forming an image of God that makes sense in both the material and the spiritual sense. Here, in Called Out of Darkness, I get the impression that she is still searching. I wish her well.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Book Worm

Spiritually Confused

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

Had I not known that Ms. Rice had once again left the church and her faith my rating would have been higher. From her birth her father gave her a man's name, Howard Allen. This started a lot of child confusion and general hatred of adults by the author. As Ms. Rice grew up her gender identity grew into a spiritual crisis and she left her Catholic Faith. However, she realized that she was wrong and went back to being (what I call) a conditional Catholic. That means she demanded of God that he accept her on her terms. The description of her return to faith was moving but once again Ms. Rice only meant that she only partially wanted Jesus back into her life. Ms. Rice left the church, a second time, because of the church she went to was too judgmental. I have news for Ms. Rice; sinners go to church as the righteous are not in need of a physician. Yeah, that was Jesus' statement when the Pharisees complained that Jesus met with sinners at the house of a future disciple, a hated tax collector, Matthew.

BTW: You don't need faith in Atheism as you asserted. Please consider the following suggestion; another statement by Jesus as he left from the Sermon on the Mount. The so-called intellectuals mocked Jesus for his statements about his divinity. Jesus said "If you don't believe in the things I say then believe in the works I do." Go do some works!

2 people found this helpful

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LRM

Reflections of My Youth Upon Christ

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

Indeed Anne's descriptive memories of her childhood growing up in a large Catholic family brought back many memories. The ones most cherished however were those of the church with the beautiful descriptions of the stained glass windows, the altar, Holy Communion, the Stations of the Cross..... The Crowning of Our Blessed Mother. All, I hold closer to my heart than I ever realized. Although I've had a faith crisis in the last few years that was short lived I have walked with the Lord for forty years. I did not know him in my childhood although, like Anne, if anyone had asked, my response would have been positive. It was only when I was in my early thirties, when I truly asked him to come into my heart, engaged in a personal relationship with my Lord Jesus, that I knew. I've sought him ever since as I so need him in every aspect of my life and this book has given me a even deeper hunger.
Having taken many Bible studies over the years I find that although I see where Anne is coming from in her assessment of the totality of embracing all faiths, all peoples, I still very much believe that as the scriptures clearly state we are to love our fellow man but we are also to speak truth. Therefore truth comes from the Word of God, these are the words of Jesus. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Then verses 17 & 18 "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

This speaks so clearly that to have eternal life with our Father in heaven , it is through his Son Jesus. We can't pretend otherwise!!
We are all sinners yet we always strive to abide by His word, loving one another, speaking truth in love, though others might perish, therefore allowing light to come into any darkness.

Through this book much 'light' has come into mine and for that I thank you. It truly blessed me!!

In His Joy, Linda Morris

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Top reviews from other countries

Rachel Conkey

... am not religious although raised Catholic but I really enjoyed this read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2016

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I am not religious although raised Catholic but I really enjoyed this read. Very philosophical yet extremely accessible. Very poignant read. Definitely worth reading if you are a Rice fan. Gives insights into some of the themes of Rice's novels, and on a broader spectrum speaks about the human condition.

frankie

love this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2013

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love this book a story which could well be so many other peoples. A must read if you are a fan of Anne Rice.

Brilliant insight into a wonderful writer

Reviewed in Canada on July 30, 2016

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Candid. Sincere. Evoking. Powerful. Beautiful. I love how passionately Anne Rice describes the major role religion/her beliefs played in becoming the writer she is today. I simply couldn't put the book down. I read the entire non-fiction novel in one sitting. I understand, and you will too, why she writes about vampires, witches, angels and demons. They are and always will be the world we cannot belong to but yearn so much to learn about. Interestingly enough, had it not been for her Catholic upbringing, she would not have created the characters she created. Through these characters (both supernatural and natural), you see reflected how God's supreme force plays a role in how we view ourselves or how other "beings" came to be and what purpose each must fulfill. I'm VERY happy I purchased this non-fiction work. It gave me a greater insight into why Anne Rice is the way she is and how she came to be.

Jonathan Lozano

I have a mix of feelings

Reviewed in Mexico on March 11, 2021

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It's a nice book. I'm not a religious person, but I enjoy the reading. I felt it quite intimate. Dispite this a have a mix of feelings with the quality of the book. It looks like it was a school project for the first semester in design school. The sheets are not properly cut in one of the sides. The image looks that was not properly edited and kindda blurish an also looks a little bit crooked.

Krista

Authentic Heartfelt Christ-led

Reviewed in Canada on May 16, 2021

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Riveting Important Inspiring for Christians atheists, secular humanists, people who have lost faith and people of other faiths, and people who are seeking truth. A journey many in secular Western culture can relate to and find hope in. Thank you, Anne!