From the dust jacket:
Edward Weeks, editor of The Atlantic and author of THE OPEN HEART, writes of Kathryn Hulme's new book, THE NUN'S STORY:
"In many of us the need cries out for more privacy, for a less distracted, more dedicated life than circumstances permit. This need for inner renewal so beautifully certified by Mrs. Lindbergh's GIFT FROM THE SEA is now illuminated for us by a new witness, THE NUN'S STORY by Kathryn Hulme.
"This book actually happened; it is true in its essentials. It is the portrait of Sister Luke, a Belgian girl who turned aside from marriage to enter a famous nursing order. In the trials, medical and spiritual, which Sister Luke must pass as she moves from novice to nun and thence out to a hospital in the Belgian Congo, she makes us feel the humility of the true religious; she makes us admire her superiors–what rare women are the Superior General and Mother Mathilda! and she makes us realize as never before what a voice the conscience must be in such a life.
"The chapters on Africa are the heart of the book; the spirit of Dr. Schweitzer walks through them, and when at the end of her assignment Sister Luke takes her touching departure in her compartment banked with flowers and the little ebony statue in her lap our love for her is like that of the natives.
"Yet it is in her obedience that Sister Luke is most vulnerable. For she is more nurse than nun. When in 1940 her hospital on the Dutch border is caught up in the Resistance, her abhorrence for the Nazis cannot be subdued. So begins the deciding struggle within herself.
"The author, Kathryn Hulme, who won the Atlantic Nonfiction Award in 1953, is writing about a woman immeasurably dear. To read THE NUN'S STORY is to be brought within the radiance of a noble, deeply felt experience."
Did you find this review helpful?