Anne Rice has written magnificent tales of otherworldly beings: novels that explore the realms of good and evil, love and alienation, pageantry and ritual, each a reflection of her own moral journey. Now, in a powerful and haunting memoir—her first work of nonfiction—she writes about her own life as a Catholic.

She begins with her New Orleans childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, with all the devotions of her religious milieu. She describes how, as she grew up, she slowly lost her belief in God, and how, despite that, she was still compelled to live in a conscientious and meaningful way. She recounts her years in radical Berkeley, where she wrote Interview with the Vampire (a lament for her lost faith) and where she came to admire the secular humanist tenet of working to make life better for others.

She writes about loss and alienation (her mother's drinking; the deaths of her young daughter, and later her husband, from cancer) . . . about the birth of her son, Christopher . . . and about how, after thirty-eight years as an atheist, she returned to New Orleans and—under the roof of her childhood church—once again came to believe in Christ.

A spiritual confession that is, as well, a celebration: a book that brilliantly, subtly explores the journey through life that allows one to answer the call out of darkness.