About the featured author:
From the author’s website:
Anna Quinn is the author of The Night Child, (Blackstone, 2018) listed as #1 Best Real Psychological Fiction on Goodreads, and Ingram’s 2018 Best Book Group Book. Her second novel, Angeline, (Blackstone2023) is a Foreword Review Winner and was nominated for a Washington State Book Award. Her work has garnered praise from Meg Waite Clayton, Elizabeth George, Luis Alberto Urrea, Pam Houston, Melissa Febos, Lidia Yuknavitch, Library Journal, and more. Quinn’s writing has appeared in Psychology Today, New YorkTimes Book Review, Medium, Writer’s Digest, and the Alone Together Anthology.
She is the founder of The Writers’ Workshoppe in Port Townsend, WA., and has thirty years of experience teaching and leading writing workshops across the country.
When she isn’t writing, she’s kayaking the Salish Sea or hiking in the Olympic Rainforest.
About Anna’s book Angeline:
A moving, lyrical, melancholy, and spiritual novel by the acclaimed author of The Night Child, in which Sister Angeline, unwillingly sent to a radical convent and confronting her tragic past, asks the question, follow your heart or follow the rules?
After surviving a tragedy that killed her entire family, sixteen-year-old Meg joins a cloistered convent, believing it is her life’s work to pray full time for the suffering of others. Taking the name Sister Angeline, she spends her days and nights in silence, moving from one prayerful hour to the next. She prays for the hardships of others, the sick and poor, the loved ones she lost, and her own atonement.
When the Archdiocese of Chicago runs out of money to keep the convent open, she is torn from her carefully constructed life and sent to a progressive convent on a rocky island in the Pacific Northwest. There, at the Light of the Sea, five radical feminist nuns have their own vision of faithful service. They do not follow canonical law, they do not live a cloistered life, and they believe in using their voices for change.
As Sister Angeline struggles to adapt to her new home, she must navigate her grief, fears, and confusions, while being drawn into the lives of a child in crisis, an angry teen, an EMT suffering survivor’s guilt, and the parish priest who is losing his congregation to the Sisters’ all-inclusive Sunday masses. Through all of this, something seems to have awakened in her, a healing power she has not experienced in years that could be her saving grace, or her downfall.
In Angeline, novelist Anna Quinn explores the complexity of our past selves and the discovery of our present truth; the enduring imprints left by our losses, forgiveness and acceptance, and why we believe what we believe. Affecting and beautifully told, Angeline is both poignant and startling and will touch the hearts of anyone who has ever asked themselves: When your foundations crumble and you’ve lost yourself, how do you find the strength to go on? Do you follow your heart or the rules?
Praise:
“Quinn offers a beautifully complex story of a young woman’s search for redemption. A delightful, yet emotional listen that will have listeners laughing and rooting for this ragtag group of women.” —Library Journal
“Issuing a strong refrain of redemption, Angeline is a novel in which bold and loving nuns move toward a healing future, with or without the approval of the Vatican.” —Foreword Reviews
“This immersive tale will resonate with fans of Alice Sebold and readers who appreciate compelling characters and lyrical writing.”—Booklist
“Sister Angeline is a character for the ages. Anna Quinn has created a deeply moving portrait of a great soul at the precipice of faith and duty and the shadows of a wrenching past. It’s beautiful, and like all true beauty, the book is haunting, if not haunted.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels and The Devil’s Highway
“Through the evocative prose and story that is Anna Quinn’s Angeline, we’re reminded that grief is complex and dynamic and that, sometimes, taking a leap of faith can be the ultimate healing experience. This is the perfect read for anyone who believes in miracles, or wants to believe.” —Meg Waite Clayton, author of the international bestsellers The Postmistress of Paris and The Last Train to London
Author visits:
Author visits with Anna are available via Adventures by the Book here.