And Then They Were Nuns

“Beatrice has probably told you that when someone starts talking seriously about staying, we usually send her home for awhile, away from the seductions of these holy hills, so she can decide whether she really wants to plant herself in a nunnery. And to make sure she’s not running away. As I was.”

JULIAN PINES ABBEY. From 1965 to 2000, women come and stay or come and go in a quiet experiment to remake religious and communal life. No tradition is safe from revision – not the tradition that says God is male, or that women can’t be priests, or that nuns must be celibate.

With a vision both generous and uncompromising, And Then They Were Nuns tells the story of the women who, as Sister Anne says, come for all the wrong reasons and – if they stay – stumble on good ones, while they struggle, sometimes hilariously, with love, sex, community, snakes, neighbors, outhouses, poverty, goats, sanity, sobriety, sisterhood, compost, and the life of the spirit.