Altar Music

In her achingly beautiful and revelatory first novel, Christin Lore Weber, a former nun, explores the nature and power of passion -- sexual, religious, and artistic -- and brings us into a mysterious, cloistered world rarely made public. Set in the wild, rock-and-lake region of northern Minnesota, this is an exquisitely told tale of three generations of strong-willed women and their inner battles to balance personal longings with the disciplines of their church. Meghan, in the first generation, dismisses the priest's injunctions regarding sex and succumbs to her passion for her husband. But when family tragedy strikes, she believes she has been brought down by the hand of God himself for her sexual indulgence. In the second generation, Kate is so afraid of what God could take away -- "husbands, fathers, brothers, music even. God could take your life if he wanted" -- that she learns to steel herself against any deep emotion or desire, to simply "endure, be faithful, and hope to be spared some small thing she loved, something perhaps God didn't want." By the third generation, the passions that moved her mother and grandmother have converged and intensified in young Elise, who is roused by forces beyond her understanding. She is at once a daughter of the Catholic church, a music prodigy, and a tuning fork for nature's wildness. But upon her high school graduation in 1958, Elise forsakes her musical genius and her family to enter the convent -- a beautiful, exhilarating, disillusioning, and haunting experience that will drive her, ultimately, to consider leaving the church. Written with stunning lyricism and emotional authenticity, Altar Music is a portrait of a nun as a young girl, a portrait of a family both defined and divided by its religious beliefs, and a powerful story about mothers and daughters. Heart-wrenching and thought-provoking, this novel brilliantly depicts the blurring of the lines between sexual passion, artistic passion, and religious fervor, and the losses we suffer when we try to translate one into another.

Review :
Karen Armstrong author of "A History of God" and "Through the Narrow Gate" A brave and sensitive attempt to explore the connections between sexuality and religion, the perils of the celibate life, and the human capacity for self-regeneration. Weber convincingly shows how we can be held in thrall by the past, that human beings unwittingly pass a legacy of pain from one generation to another, but that healing and reconciliation are possible too. Mary Gordon author of "Final Payments Altar Music" is a fine evocation of the various richnesses of a woman's inner life. I was particularly struck by the portrayal of convent life, which grips the reader while avoiding the twin traps of piety and melodrama. Sheri Reynolds author of "The Rapture of Canaan Altar Music" is more than a love story, more than a family saga, more than a portrait of convent life or a spiritual journey. It is beautiful and sweeping, textured with the heat of wool and blood, the softness of a spider's web in wind, sounds of Christmas ornaments breaking, a single note ringing from a convent piano. Christin Lore Weber's novel reads like a song. It will sing you awake.