Tomatoes in glory: Faith and fervor in Ron Hansen’s ‘Mariette in Ecstasy’

[Michie]

Photo by Erica MacLean.

The beautiful, atmospheric novel “Mariette in Ecstasy,” published in 1991, explores the line between faith and delusion through the story of a young nun in New York State in the early 1900s. Author Ron Hansen, a cradle Catholic who attended Jesuit high school and was ordained a deacon of the Church in 2007, is perhaps best known for literary Westerns, including “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”

In “Mariette in Ecstasy,” Hansen situates teenage novice Mariette Baptiste and her fellow Sisters of the Crucifixion in a lush, glorious landscape of scents, sounds and bucolic views. The rhythms of the convent life are closely entwined with a natural world — milking cows, harvesting grapes and making wine — that also includes the nuns’ physical realities, including their sexuality. They live austere lives amid shocking instances of sensual glory, such as Mariette’s first meal in the convent, where “wild quail in spiced vinegar are served along with hot bread and green peas and a grand cruwine from the Haut Medoc.” (This is an unusual, one-time-only repast, donated to the nunnery.)

Continued below.

Tomatoes in glory: Faith and fervor in Ron Hansen's 'Mariette in Ecstasy'

A meditation on faith and desire, "Mariette in Ecstasy" inspires a curried tomato recipe that honors the novel’s sensual, sacred world.

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