A compassionate page-turner that is at once a gripping thriller and a deep examination of grief, Anna Quinn’s Angeline takes us from the cloistered halls of a Chicago convent to an island in the Pacific Northwest where a group of remarkable women have created a community on their own terms. Filled with memorable characters and startling events, Angeline illuminates the power of nature, friendship, and self-acceptance to heal the most painful of wounds. Writing with lyricism, grace, and insight, Anna Quinn reminds us of our shared suffering, our shared humanity, and the possibility of transformation even in the darkest of times.”
bestselling author of What Comes After JoAnne Tompkins
Quinn is a powerful writer who straddles the depth of despair and the height of joy with grace and beauty. Her story is both lyrical and terrifying, and, for those of us who so desperately want to believe, a breath of fresh air in a world we’re not sure we want to occupy. Angeline is a book to be treasured.”
USA Today bestselling author of Nowhere Near Goodb Barbara Conrey
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.”
Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of Luis Alberto Urrea
This immersive tale will resonate with readers who appreciate compelling characters and lyrical writing.”
Angeline combines the mystical with millennia-old beliefs and twenty-first-century front-page news. This is a truly lovely novel that develops into an exciting thriller.”
In prose that shimmers off the page, Anna Quinn takes us inside the life of a progressive convent on an island in the Salish Sea. At the heart of the story is Sister Angeline, who has been dispatched from the shelter of her old convent to seek a spiritual home with a group of radical feminist nuns. But like a tidepool that appears tranquil on the surface, island life soon proves more treacherous than it presents and Angeline’s’ spiritual quest takes a darker turn. She must break through the nested cloisters of her mind and heart to discover that salvation takes many forms. A story that is at once a nuanced journey of forgiveness and a masterfully crafted psychological thriller, Sister Angeline asks us to consider who gets to decide what is moral, what is right and whether there is a difference. ‘Wade into the water with me,’ one of Angeline’s sister nuns asks of her. Quinn asks us to do the same.”
author of Crossing the River: Seven Stories Th Carol Smith
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.”
internationally bestselling author of The Postmist Meg Waite Clayton
I love novels that bring a place to life and in this Anna Quinn does not disappoint. In her second novel, she masterfully creates an island in the Pacific Northwest that jumps off the page and begs to be visited. On this island she places an avant-garde religious order of nuns who have been summarily excommunicated by the Pope for various feminist infractions. No matter to the members of the renegade convent, which houses itself in a collection of yurts and offers Sunday services to the people of the island. A nun called Sister Angeline joins them, having been sent there by a Mother Superior who knows that the radical alteration in Angeline’s preferred lifestyle of silence, contemplation, bodily punishment, and prayer needs some serious changes. Light of the Sea ‘convent’ will definitely provide that. The characters Angeline encounters are quirky and wise. The place she finds them in is a balm to her soul. She needs to be relieved of the burdens she carries from her past, and the renegade nuns are the ones to get her started. Angeline is a read that has everything: place, characters, and social issues, all delivered by the author in a way that never even verges on becoming a polemic.”
#1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George
Angeline is a mystical hymn to the power of women in community, with an entry point that only the rare writer has the guts to brave. Quinn does it with empathy and acumen, never vilifying. Instead, as you read her lyrical prose, you feel her pure, seeking spirit. Her never heavy-handed, third-eye-wide-open aperture, as she links arms with you from the first sentence…all the way to the last. I loved this gem of a novel.”
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Laura Munson
[A] mystical, marvelous tale of love and loss and growth, a story that takes place at the fascinating intersection of twenty-first-century realism and centuries-old faith. The language is pure poetry, and the story is both mysterious and inevitable, terrifying and inspiring. A beautifully plotted novel that will cling to the reader for a very long time.”
author of A Secret History of Witches Louisa Morgan
Angeline , Anna Quinn’s second novel, expertly evokes the complexity of our world’s situation in her well-drawn microcosm of life on Beckett Island where Sister Angeline is sent when the Chicago nunnery she has lived in must close. Even there, authoritarian power and misogyny past and present intrude on the peaceful and stirring natural Northwest environment. Sister Angeline’s adaptation to the free-spirited convent will keep you reading to learn what lies at the bottom of acts of violence, against nature, against others, even against one’s own life. Five stars for this novel that speaks compellingly through the heart of a way forward to a better future for us all.”
author of Since Then: Poems and Short Prose Sheila Bender
A poetic, innovative story that portrays the interplay between trauma and memory. Sister Angeline’s narrative reveals how the mind is constantly processing the world around us and the world within us, a dialogue between past and present. This book is a triumph of beauty and human resilience.”
author of The Girl from Blind River Gale Massey
An incandescent novel of a young nun’s journey through searing loss, and atonement toward a shimmering redemption. The achingly spare language encapsulates Angeline’s self-negation as well as her singular gifts. A testament to the power of love to transform cruelty and loss into strength and freedom.”
author of Painting through the Dark Gemma Whelan
Angeline is unique: a gripping read filled with darkness and light. Beautiful language and landscape coexist alongside sinister events surrounding a small community of feminist nuns, but despite the shadow of violence and fear, this story is about choosing forgiveness and compassion, and guiding others to healing and love.”
bestselling author of The Perfect Son and The Prom Barbara Claypole White
Anna Quinn’s novels dive deep into the human psyche, exploring our capacity to harm and heal. Angeline is a call to open arms, a clear-eyed view of our often-flawed humanity and how the power of compassion can change everything. It is a novel of gorgeous sentences and beautiful messages. It left me feeling stronger, wiser, and in complete awe.”
New York Times bestselling author of The Scent Kee Erica Bauermeister
01/23/2023
Quinn follows up The Night Child with a melodramatic account of a miracle-worker nun who must adjust to a new convent. In 2015, after 24-year-old Sister Angeline’s cloistered Chicago convent shuts down, she finds a place at the Light of the Sea, on an island off the coast of Washington State. There, the radical sisters run their own services in defiance of the local parish. Angeline, who hopes her monastic life will atone for the guilt she harbors over an accident that killed her parents, younger brother, and unborn child, struggles to fit in with the motley group. Among them are a Muslim woman hiding from death threats by the Iraqi government, a free-spirited artist, and a woman who took a vow of silence after her son was killed. Angeline has a history of having her prayers miraculously answered, but she runs into resistance after she reports suspicions of a neighboring young girl’s abuse by her father. She then hears a voice from a statue of St. Francis, encouraging her not to fear her rage as troubling discoveries are made at the convent, such as a dead squirrel left in the mailbox. Though Angeline’s interior struggles are nicely portrayed, most of the crises she faces are too quickly resolved and her healing powers remain too mysterious. This one disappoints. Agent: Gordon Wamock, Fuse Literary Agency. (Mar.)
An incandescent novel of a young nun’s journey through searing loss, and atonement towards a shimmering redemption. The achingly spare language encapsulates Angeline’s self-negation as well as her singular gifts. A testament to the power of love to transform cruelty and loss into strength and freedom.”
Gemma Whelan author of Painting Through the Dark
Angeline , Anna Quinn’s second novel, expertly evokes the complexity of our world’s situation in her well-drawn microcosm of life on Beckett Island where Sister Angeline is sent when the Chicago nunnery she has lived in must close. Even there, authoritarian power and misogyny past and present intrude on the peaceful and stirring natural Northwest environment. Sister Angeline’s adaptation to the free-spirited convent will keep you reading to learn what lies at the bottom of acts of violence, against nature, against others, even against one’s own life. Five stars for this novel that speaks compellingly through the heart of a way forward to a better future for us all.”
Sheila Bender author of Since Then: Poems and Short Prose
A poetic, innovative story that portrays the interplay between trauma and memory. Sister Angeline’s narrative reveals how the mind is constantly processing the world around us and the world within us, a dialogue between past and present. This book is a triumph of beauty and human resilience.”
Gale Massey author of The Girl from Blind River
Angeline is a mystical hymn to the power of women in community, with an entry point that only the rare writer has the guts to brave. Quinn does it with empathy and acumen, never vilifying. Instead, as you read her lyrical prose, you feel her pure, seeking spirit. Her never heavy-handed, third-eye-wide-open aperture, as she links arms with you from the first sentence…all the way to the last. I loved this gem of a novel.”
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author an Laura Munson